is a senior reviewer focused on smart home and connected tech, with over twenty years of experience. She has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
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I recently returned from a family camping trip to Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I live in South Carolina, so in mid-July, a trip to the mountains is usually an excellent way to seek out cooler temperatures. Not this year.
Thanks to this summer’s heat dome, I was facing a week of feels-like temperatures upwards of 100 degrees — and no air conditioning. I went into planning mode.
We were camping in our Rockwood Mini Lite RV, which meant we had a fridge, access to power outlets, and water. But the campground didn’t have electrical or water hookups, so we needed our own power and some portable cooling.
Normally, you’d expect an RV to provide all of that. Not on this trip. Camping can get messy when things go wrong, and it’s a good thing that I review gadgets for a living, as I brought along five that saved our vacation.
Our camping spot is in Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. No hookups for electricity or water meant we needed to bring our own power.
Our camping spot was in Cades Cove, a wide valley deep in the western range of the Smoky Mountains, about 10 miles from the small town of Townsend, Tennessee. We arrived a little after 9PM ET, which was too late to start our generator; campgrounds limit when you can run them due to noise, so we switched over to the RV’s 12-volt batteries.
Or so we thought. Something was wrong with the trailer’s wiring that connected to the battery system. We were going to have to be creative to make it through the next seven days of sweltering heat.
Smart gadget save number one: I pulled out the Govee Table Lamp 2 Pro X Sound by JBL and placed it on the table in our RV. The large, battery-powered LED lamp provided enough light to unpack, and, as a bonus, its speaker meant that I could stream some tunes over Bluetooth from my phone while we were working.
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