January is a big month for outdoor gear, when a lot of manufacturers show-off their new wares at the annual Consumer Electronics Show and the Winter Outdoor Retailer expo. Even with the economy in the dumps, manufacturers are moving ahead with innovative products that are lighter, greener, and more functional than previous generations.

Family-Friendlier

Kelty Transit Carrier 2.1 - $120

Family recreation is going to be big this year and the Kelty® Transit Carrier (TC) 2.1 eliminates that baby of an excuse: when the kids get older. Suitable for children up to 40 pounds, the TC 2.1 also serves as a fine daypack when you don’t need the carrier. www.Kelty.com

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Our severely warped aluminum griddle

There’s something about camping and cast iron cookware that just seems right. Maybe it’s the old westerns, with the dutch oven sitting over the fire, or the cowboy frying-up bacon in his skillet over an open fire – cast iron cookware is an icon of the American West and it remains so, today.

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Eton FR500 Solarlink AM/FM/Shortwave/Weather radio

With a hat tip to Rohit Bhargava at the Influential Marketing Blog, comes this cool multipurpose radio that is used by the American Red Cross. If it’s useful enough for the American Red Cross to handout during emergencies then it’s probably worth considering for the campsite, too. The American Red Cross FR500 Solarlink, by Eton Corporation, covers all the bases with AM/FM/Shortwave and NOAA weather bands. It also incorporates a digital alarm clock, flashlight, an emergency beacon, and an emergency siren.

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Casa (left) and Green River (Right) tents

Jason Bean, from =) Bnpositive’s Blog, asked me the other day what my recommendation was for “a quality, yet affordable family tent for 4 people.” This was on Twitter, where brevity is key (Twitter limits posts to a maximum length of 140 characters), so I thought I would follow up on my response to Jason with a little more information about the two tents that I recommended; the Mountain Hardware’s Casa line and Kelty’s Green River model.

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Road and Recreation Atlases are available for 8 western states

One of the tools I use to help locate potential camping spots is a Road and Recreation Atlas, from Benchmark Maps™. These atlases provide a lot of useful information for the recreational enthusiast that you don’t find on regular maps, like campgrounds, unimproved roads and trail heads. The company produces these atlases for eight western states and each state is broken down into various map scales, from 1:750,000 (1-inch equals about 12 miles on the map) to more-detailed 1:250,000 (1-inch equals 4 miles on the map) pages.

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