Forget the artificial brand sports drinks, you can make your own homemade sports drink  with just simple five ingredients.

Three weeks from today we’ll be on a plane headed to Vegas. Not to live it up on the strip though but rather, to spend a week hopping between national parks with my brother and sister in law. They basically convinced me to take a week off to exercise.

So far we have hiking, hiking, hiking, maybe some white water rafting, hiking, hiking and oh, did I mention hiking planned.

In June.

I’ve been to Arizona in August, I’m hoping the heat won’t be as ridiculous as that was but I’m planning on hot, sweaty and tired being the motto for this trip.

When it comes to sports drinks, I used to be a non-believer. Ice water was the only thing you’d find in my thermos every day on the soccer field (or maybe it was just that my parents never bought Gatorade for us) but after a few dizzy dehydration spells during summer workouts in the past few years, I’m a convert.

I’ve bought my fair share of Gatorade, but 1. it’s so much cheaper to make your own and 2. why ingest the artificial stuff when you don’t have to?

On this trip I know two things: it’s going to be hot and I’m going to want a cold sports drink to keep up with the million miles my brother and sister in law have planned to cover on foot.

The sports drink part is simple: 5 ingredients, 1 of which is optional and 1 of which is water.

My plan is to bring salt and calcium magnesium powder with me and hit up a grocery store once we land for a bottle of juice. I can make my own drink each morning in the hotel.

The cold part is where this Zojirushi vacuum bottle.

It keeps liquids cold or hot for several hours at a time and is perfect for something like hiking where you’re going to be outside the whole day. I took it for a test run at home since I have water with me at all times during the day and was seriously impressed when at 3pm, my water from the morning was still cold.

I’m thinking we’re going to be bff in a few weeks.

If you like this homemade sports drink recipe, you might also want to check out incorporating adrenal cocktails into your daily routine for another natural way to balance your mineral levels.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Zojirushi. The opinions and text are all mine.