We take a family vacation to Lake Powell every year where the temperature is about 100-110 degrees F during the day. We could keep things cold (ice box) or hot (outside temperature) but to maintain them between 65 and 85 degrees F would be very difficult. Are there heat stable test strips or ones that you can refrigerate?

Test strips for home blood glucose monitoring are dependent on the enzyme glucose oxidase and like all such reactions are to some extent temperature dependent. At low temperatures, the reaction will be slower and give low blood glucose readings and vice versa at high temperatures.

I don’t know if your vacation is to be in a house or on a boat, but two solutions would seem to be to take a small thermometer and to learn how long after being in the ice box the strips would take to reach the right temperature range or alternatively to see if putting them in a waterproof container and immersing them in lake water or cold tap water would serve the same purpose.

DOB