Ask any full-time RVer and they'll tell you that having a Berkey water filter is the way to go. When your source of drinking water changes every few days or weeks and you can never know what to expect from the taste or quality at a given place, there's so much peace of mind in knowing that every drop you get out of this filter is going to taste clean and great.

I've never met anyone who didn't love their Berkey, and after six years of this lifestyle, making friends with dozens of fellow RVing families at rallies and campgrounds across the country, that's saying something.

It's real easy to use, too: You fill the top reservoir with water, which slowly runs through the two vertical filter elements installed at the bottom — or four, if you buy extras — and drips into the bottom canister, after which you can easily dispense some of that perfectly clear, excellent tasting goodness into your drinking glass, cooking pot, ice trays, whatever.

Arguments abound on the internet about the Berkey's actual effectiveness in filtering out contaminants, or whether it's passed some test or another. Personally, I don't worry too much about that sort of thing; I'm not using this for wilderness survival purposes, and I'm certainly not going to try running lake water through it or something. All I know is, after using this thing with tap water at campgrounds across the US, what we drink is consistently delicious and we've never had any problems.

The “Travel” Berkey pictured above ($299) has only a 1.5-gallon capacity, so you do need to stay on top of its fill level more often than, say, the 2.25-gallon “Big” Berkey ($332) or the 3.25-gallon “Royal” Berkey ($479). Not a huge deal for our little traveling pod, but the slowness of the drip-filtering is something you should definitely take into account depending on your own family's size.

Stay hydrated, friends. ??