You don't always paddle in lakes with clean drinking water, so you often have to bring water from the land. How to transport water is, like many other things, a matter of taste.
We have used simple, ordinary plastic cans that you can buy in any store, although perhaps the largest range is in do-it-yourself wine and beer stores 🙂
Standard PET bottles. Available in sizes from 0,3 to 2 liters and certainly both more and smaller. Reasonably durable and doesn't cost much. Not made for multiple use, so you might have to think about whether and, if so, what they release into the drinking water.
Different types of softer water jugs or bottles. There is quite a lot to choose from here. We like the soft varieties. It is nice that the water supply is not only getting lighter and lighter as time goes on, but also smaller and smaller.
We often have these three with us
MSR Dromedary Bags. Available in 2, 4, 6 and 10 liters and both black and red. The red ones are the light version without lots of extra laces and fluff, otherwise the same. We've had these for many years and they hold up really well. Large opening for filling and two sizes of opening for pouring. We mostly use 4&6-litres. Ten liters is so huge, clearly more flexible with a 4th and a 6th in that case, we think.
Platypus rollable bottles (Platy Bottle 2l). These don't look like much to the world but last very well. Transparent makes it easy to keep track of the contents.
Source WidePac are also the thin and semi-transparent ones. Generous opening for cleaning and filling. The ones we have have the faucet on and it has worked well but feels like a possible source of error. Source also has roller bottles similar to Nalgene.
Other manufacturers of water transport equipment are e.g. Ortlieb, Nalgene, KleanKanteen, Camelbak and SeaToSummit.
We don't usually clean our water gadgets very carefully, but then we also use them only for water. Emptying out as much water as possible and shaking dry and then opening up as much as possible, setting it warm enough with the opening upwards so that any drops can evaporate seems like a good plan.
There are variants that are padded as well. The idea is to insulate against cold and/or heat. The idea is perhaps good, but mostly makes them clumsier and bigger. And if you are out for more than half a day or so, the insulation is still not enough. Better simply and without extra finesse, we think.
Buy water storage, water transport at Outnorth
