I shared some brief thoughts on buying a GORUCK GR2 previously. Having just taking a week long trip with it, I have a bit more to share.

For my trip I spent 2 days traveling, and six days in the hotel. Because I knew I could wash my clothes, I packed pretty lightly in that regard. That meant bringing swim trunks, shorts, and pants for bottoms. For tops I brought four t-shirts, a light sweater, and a light rain jacket. I wore the pants and shoes while traveling, and also packed sandals.

The shirts were easy to wash, along with underwear and socks.

The rest of my stuff in the bag was toiletries, laptop and iPad gear, and a few other minor things.

The bag worked well to fit it all, but still doesn’t quite feel like the perfect match. For one I also packed a GORUCK 10L bullet, which doesn’t pack down very well. That meant the overall weight of the bag included roughly eight pounds of backpacks.

While I love the look of the GORUCK Bullets, I can’t quite bring myself to like how their larger bags look or feel while traveling.

I intend to keep experimenting. Maybe I’ll find a much smaller EDC backpack for when I arrive, and keep the GR2 for the travel.

With the way flights work these days, having to fit a roller bag on the plane is getting more and more stressful. Having a single backpack means I can easily fit it overheard, or squeeze it into the area under my feet.

The more I think about it, the more I want to keep traveling with just a 15L Bullet. It would mean bringing a smaller laptop (15 inch MacBooks are too large), and possibly skipping the iPad altogether.

I’ll keep experimenting.