**Camping at Assateague State Park **
Assateague Island is a national park located in Maryland that offers plenty of beach camping and hiking trails. I decided to camp on the Oceanside walk-in which is means that we had to walk from the parking lot about 200 ft to our camping area. They also offer camping areas you can drive up to as well as areas that are on the bayside of the beach. Our reserved spot on the beach included a fire ring and a picnic table and the perfect beginning to a great week of camping. During our time we were able to do some hiking along the 37 mile long park, kayak on the ocean, and Bay, see some wild ponys that rove the park, and enjoy the very clean facilities that the park offered. The Island is not far from Ocean City either if you wish to go to the Board walk which we did experience one night. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to camp along the water and listen to the waves hitting the shoreline however booking must be done in advance as reservations fill up very fast every season.
Link: https://www.nps.gov/asis/planyourvisit/marylandcamping.htm
**Ice mule Pro XL **
The Icemule Pro XL was great at what it was advertised for, which is keeping items cold. My Icemule was able to keep all the ice in its solid state for about 16 hours while sitting on the hot beach(90+ degree Fahrenheit) before melting to ice cold water. Once melted though the water stayed ice cold for roughly 30 hours. This was great because I didn’t have to refill the ice every day. The cooler was very popular with the crowds as multiple beach goers and friends would stop and ask me where I got it as they thought the design and concept of having a wearable backpack cooler was very neat. While the cooler did its job and the design was a good concept I found that it was very heavy when filled to its max. I do not believe that ordering the Icemule XXL would be realistic based off of this. Another issue I found was that packing drinks had to be done logistically in that you would have to put drinks, then ice, then add more drinks, and ice on top of that. Instead of a normal cooler where you would pack all of the drinks then pour the ice on top. This was an issue because many of my friends wanted to add some of there drinks to the cooler after I had already added the ice. None the less the drinks still stayed cool with the coolers cooling material. As mentioned I used this product while camping on the beach for a week and then used it again while watching some fireworks on the 4th of July and while the cooler did hold up the coolers back pack straps already had torn after about 10 uses. One final thing I found unfortunate was how the cooler closed. In my personal opinion Folding the opening of the cooler and buckling it was very tedious and many of my friends who used it wouldn’t go through the trouble of closing it. A regular cooler is easy to close in seconds where this takes a little more time and work. In the end it is a good cooler if you are looking for something portable and hands free but it is not something to use if you don’t have a strong back.
Link: https://icemulecoolers.com/products/the-icemule-pro-x-large
