Yeti Tundra 45 Hard Cooler

I bought this to keep 2 precooked meals for 10 people frozen before cooking during a 6 night trip in Utah this October. We used 6 gallon freezer lock bags for turkey stew and lentil sloppy joes, and followed Yeti's recommendations to pre cool with a bag of ice overnight, have a layer of ice at the bottom and on top. However, we used a layer of freezer blocks (3 or 4 that fit) on top and did fill some gaps between the gallon bags with cubed ice. The bags of food were frozen blocks when we put them in - they lasted as expected. We had the turkey stew 3 days in and had to thaw it, the lentils on the 6th night...they were just partially thawed (about 25-30% thawed) when we pulled them out to cook the 6th evening. I was curious about how this unit would work for our planned use on this trip. We didn't open the cooler unless we pulled the bags out. The unit worked like a charm, as advertised. We chose the 45 vs the 65 for space reasons...to not have extra space (the bags fit perfectly) and due to its lighter weight than the 65. We used our large (comparable size to 65) NSR cooler as our refrigerator during the week - opening and closing this one periodically in order to keep the Yeti 45 freezer closed. This process worked really well for us. Being fall with cooler temps - this likely helped too but we are impressed with how this unit worked as our freezer. We live 2.5 hours from the closest big box food shopping store that we visit every few months and will bring this 45 in addition to the larger NSR that we have to keep things chilled (or frozen) during transport. I do recommend this expensive investment in food safety.