If you are sick of buying batteries for your camping lanterns and flashlights, consider using the Hybrid Solar Lite instead. It is a super bright, solar powered, LED flashlight that can be recharged over and over again via its solar panel.

It is waterproof to 80 feet and floats when dropped in the water (unlike my cell phone that was “toast” after I accidentally dropped it in the lake while on a camping trip last year, but I guess that’s another story).

The flashlight also has a conventional battery backup. You probably won’t ever need to use it, but it’s there just in case you decide to to something like go live in a dark cave for a long time.

The best part is that the hybrid solar lite it is guaranteed for life (just don’t lose it)!

The Hybrid Solar Light is manufactured by Hybrid Light LC in Saint George, Utah, a small family owned company.

To find out more about the flashlight and how it works, watch the short video below:

For more information about the company or to purchase a Hybrid Solar light, visit the company’s website at hybridlite.com. Enter the discount code of blog08 to receive $2.50 off your hybridlite. The code is good through December 31, 2008.

Coleman has a new LED lantern that has 4 removable sections that can be taken out of the base lantern and carried as portable lights for things like late night trips to the campground bathroom.

After getting back from the bathroom, it is just a matter of putting the portable section back into the base lantern. It eliminates the need for multiple flashlights, which my family is forever misplacing.

The lantern is powered by 8 D-cell batteries that are housed in the lantern base and will operate up to 75 hours on one set of batteries.

The lantern has 24 LEDs total. Each of the 4 removable panels has 6 LEDs in it. Each of the portable panels contain a rechargeable NiMH battery to power it while it is off the base and will run up to 1.5 hours while away from the base.

The MSRP is $69.99. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to put one under the Christmas tree this year because they won’t be available until January 2009.

To see the lantern in use, watch the video below.

I remember the first time I went camping. A bit of a late comer to the camping scene, I didn’t go on my first real camping trip until I was in college.

Our trip involved a 5 hour drive and by the time we got to the campsite it was getting dark and we still had to setup our tent.

I didn’t own a tent at the time and I had never set one up before but my friend had borrowed one from his parents. This thing was old and neither of us were experts in the setup of this thing. It took us about 45 minutes before we finally figured out how to put all the pieces together. I maintain that we would have had got that sucker setup a lot faster had we not been holding flashlights trying to find all the pieces, but nonetheless it took a while.

These days I have my own tent and it can be setup completely in less than 10 minutes (including inflating my air mattress to sleep on).

However, today I’m feeling like 10 minutes to setup a tent is an eternity. I just found a tent that can be setup in 2 seconds! Seriously, you take this thing, throw it in the air, and by the time it hits the the tent has deployed and is setup. All you need to do is anchor it to the ground. It’s called the “2 Seconds” tent and it’s made by Quechua.

They have several different models and colors to choose from. So if you’re looking for a freaking sweet tent and you want something that can get setup in a hurry (think of how nice that’d be if you have to setup in the rain) then this tent rocks.

Want one? They start at $83 and are available from Quechua.com

You can watch this tent in action in this video (I was mesmerized). The first one shows the throw and deploy technique. The second one is a home video that shows setup and how quickly it can be taken down (about 20 seconds)