Originally posted by Tom S. There are a couple thoughts on memory cards. If you take one large one and it craps out, you're doomed. If you take a bunch of smaller ones, you increase the odds one of them will crap out on you, which doesn't mean your doomed, but it's not good either. I opt for two large cards and a portable back up drive to back up to. Worked great for our recent trip abroad. A laptop will work too, if you're taking one.
If you are shooting RAW+Jpg, the files are huge. I used two 32GB cards and nearly filled them both with a combined total of over 1400 shots of RAW+Jpg.
If you are going to be hiking in the wild, consider taking a small caliber pistol with you in case of bear. It won't do any good to use on the bear, but you can shoot whoever's with you in the knee cap and thus out run them. (J/K, of course.)
I adopted a similar but unarmed approach on a recent trip to Europe, as bears were in short supply there, and I didn't take anything longer than my 18-135. On this last point, the weather sealing was tested well (and proven) in Amsterdam, where we were subject to a sudden downpour of almost tropical intensity.
Tablets aren't an effective substitute for a laptop yet, so a lightweight laptop is essential. I took my two year old 13" MacBook Pro, and tagged photos each night, along with some basic editing in CS5. I also backed up onto a small portable hard drive. SD cards from a reputable maker are a must: cheap is not cheerful here.
Harking back to the PC-Mac comments, Apple has an edge in light laptops and in keeping your desktop clear (with the iMac), but PC manufacturers are copying their products now, so that has more influence on the convergence of effectiveness than the use of Intel processors, which was adopted by Apple only because Motorola had no development plan for the G-5 processor.