I'm already planning for our annual trip to Lancaster PA in early April. That's an 8-hour car trip! We have to have a good supply of food! What if we get lost, or have a flat tire? What if we get detoured due to an accident ahead of us and have to spend hours waiting to get back on the highway? (This really did happen once.)

We always take goldfish crackers and/or pretzels, Fritos, grapes, jelly beans, peanut m&ms. Sometimes I fix apple slices and I like string cheese too. One friend has her stash of Diet Coke; I usually have bottled water, although I might splurge this year and bring some Fresca. I think this year I'm going to suggest that we bring along some sandwiches in the cooler so we won't be tempted to stop for a fast food lunch.

The Goldfish are my reminder of travel with my boys: I would always buy goldfish for a roadtrip but never had them in the house any other time....so they were special.

Teresa

Teresa, that's a sweet memory. In fact, your post made me go dig out some goldfish crackers I had in the kitchen, which I'm enjoying right now!

I don't leave home without coffee.

I worked for years as a road sales rep, long hours in the car was an everyday occurrence. It was jump in the car and drive, some days maybe only an hour other days as much as five hours. But I always had my coffee. Any further and I flew. I still just jump in an go, just did it last week, five hours one way to visit my DM.

I'm sure parents have to give road trips much more thought.

Nancy

Oh, you should meet my girlfriend, Vicki! LOL She is the "queen" of the "moveable feast"!

A few years ago she and I took a road trip to Chicago to spend a few days with my daughter, Erin. I kid you not, we ate like kings all the way! We had shrimp cocktail, hummus and crackers, artichoke dip with baguette rounds, assorted veggies....

Now if it is ME who is preparing the road trip snacks we might have crackers & cheese, chips, maybe a sandwich or two and of course some chocolate.

Linda

Nancy, me either! I also like to jump in the car and just go. It's harder these days as we travel with our dog, but she has a backpack full of food and her own tent. I use to be able to pack everything in 20 minutes or under, but that was then.

Linda, I'm sure I'd love to meet your friend. Anyone who thinks about a ''movable feast'' is my kind of individual, especially the kind to take along on a road trip!

I am a huge fan of parks and love to be outside so I almost always plan a picnic when we take a roadtrip. I take a tablecloth and pack a cooler with special nibbles. I can only think of a couple of times when we could not find a nice place to stop and have a picnic and then we just opened the back of my Nitro and spread everything out at a rest stop. If it is a really long trip pack somthing spicy/hot for when you start feeling a little sleepy, I find it helps alot. I also pack extra drinks even if its just water bottles thrown in the back. I have handed out plenty to broken down hard on their luck families and kids.

Melissa

For me and my Mom - when we travel to my sister's together - it's just not a road trip without a bag of lemon drop candies and some Pepperidge Farms Mint Milano cookies.

Don't ask me why - it's just become a tradition with us.

Otherwise, we generally try to stop someplace that ISN'T a chain to eat! We've found some mighty good places just by doing this.

Pat, that reminds me of a book called Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon. He thought you could tell how good a local cafe/restaurant was by how many calendars they had hanging from the locals in the area.

Melissa, that's a good tip about packing something spicy to stay awake. I'm taking that with me on my next road trip!

My husband and I are big on just-off-the-road picnics too. There's always someplace to stop. What I pack depends on the length of the trip. I might make sandwiches, some sort of veggie/potato/noodle salad, a thermos of soup. I almost always pack some sort of fruit as well.

We don't generally have junk food around the house, so stopping for some chips or pretzels or something is pretty normal. But, I pack sodas, milk, tea or coffee as I hate to pay the inflated prices at convenience stores when I have all that stuff at home. Also, a big jug of ice water is essential as we both love /need water.

If it's a long trip, I'll pack a big cooler with all sorts of things. If we're staying over in a hotel, I like us to have the option of rummaging in the cooler if we don't feel like going out to eat. I will often pack things like crackers, cans of smoked oysters, sardines or vienna sausage along with a hot plate, sauce pan, and canned soup and veggies. I just hate having to go out to eat. If we feel like it, and there is somewhere we want to go, that's great, but otherwise I am just as happy to have an indoor picnic.

I thought road trips were an excuse to eat out for every meal!
Otherwise, I have bottled water.

Depends on where we're headed and how fast we want to get there...if we're driving highway with little available along the way I'll use the occasion to be bad and pack Mother Goose liverwurst sandwiches on white bread with mayo and sweet onion. Thick cut potato chips and chocolate milk round out that menu. That's about the only time we have those sandwiches and we have several apiece!

Another vice we indulge in only on roadtrips is Kentucky Fried Chicken (if we happen to run across one).

But if we're in no hurry to get to our destination, I love getting off the highway and going into little towns and finding Mom & Pop places to have something to eat. I never let DH turn into a McDonald's or Burger King. I tell him "I just know if we go up the road a little bit further there will be something really good" and there usually is.

seagrass

Maybe I need to relax more, but to me road trips are all about getting there quickly. So it's all about bladder control. Food makes you thirsty makes you drink makes you pee. So choose your intake wisely, because I'm not stopping until I'm out of gas, and that's about 6 hours from now. LOL!

I can't imagine snacking all the way there. I take stops as a message that I need to walk around and stretch my legs as much as possible. And eat the local cuisine.

If I were to eat away all thru a trip, I'd pack on an additional 40 or 50 pounds.

And I realize that travel with small children is a different animal, and requires some emergency snacks.

We travel with an ice chest with diet cokes and bottled water and maybe beer and wine for the hotel when we get there. And some emergency breakfast bars.

If I were to be traveling in iffy weather, I'd pack an emergency stash, just in case.

But no, I don't snack on drives any more than I snack at home. Meals alone are a big enough calorie sinkhole for me.

I make the 11 hour trip on I-80 from PA to MI several times a year. I used to stop at restaurants as a way to stretch, but I can no longer afford both money and time-wise. Nice mom and pop places are getting rarer and rarer on the road. OH has Panera in a lot of rest stops and I really like their bread, which I often buy as a gift for my folks. Their soups and rolls are a good meal, not too expensive but I still can't go for it anymore. I have a large and small cooler for the car. The large one usually gets whatever food I have in the fridge that I don't want to rot so I take it along for a trip. The smaller one has my road food. These are my standbys:

Roasted unsalted almonds, an apple, and cheese sticks. I like the lowfat ones from Cracker Barrel or Sargento. Occasionally carrot sticks. Hummus and wheat thins. Occasionally grapes. Occasionally an orange that I have to stop and peel, but tastes so good. Diet gingerale. Sometimes pasta salad and some kind of sandwich like fake ham and swiss, or tuna fish. Hard boiled eggs. Coleslaw. These are the kinds of things I usually have in the fridge for my work lunches anyway. I feel really lucky when I have good muffins or homeade cookies. When I do have to stop for food, it is usually a bag of gorp, cheese and peanut butter crackers, and pop tarts, which are just about the WORST food imaginable, (even worse than a twinkie, but I don't know why, I just like them!) Sometimes I do coffee or tea in a thermos, but that's something I'm likely to buy on the road. When I was a meat eater I liked smoked oysters in a tin! Now I know too much about them! I also love quick breads, two sliced spread with butter or neufatchel and sandwiched together. Cranberry is my favorite.

Clair de luna, that is one of my favorite books, I have read it several times!
When DH and I first started dating we used to take day trips to Burlington, Vt where my sister lived. We used to hop in the car and arrive on her doorstep 4 hours later. We usually took Pringles, peanut MnMs, some sodas and trail mix. We always stopped in Waterbury at the Cabot Factory and ate the free samples of cheese and crackers. We'd then visit my sister for awhile, wander the city and head home. It was fun, but that was back when we had my DH's Toyota Tercel and he could fill it up for $10 total. Now that we have our dog, we tend to avoid those unplanned trips. She gets lonely. :]

rachelellen, I totally understand wanting to stay in and have a picnic, especially if it's been a big day of driving. I've done that many times, very happy to have a cooler on hand. You pack a hot plate and a saucepan? Wow. What do you use for a hotplate?

Bumblebeez, sometimes I just can't face another restaurant meal. It's less about the food I think, and sometimes about the amount of time it takes, or just not wanting to get back in the car.

Seagrass, I grew up on liverwurst sandwiches and haven't had one years! That's a childhood memory that reminds me of my Dad, who loved them.

bhevv, I've been known to stop at McDonald's for a cheeseburger. Sometimes nothing else will do. It's good you can find them anywhere U.S.A.

Jim, No SPAM! No SPAM! (Although I respect your right to eat it whenever you want.)

foodonastump, I know many people like you. It's not always about the destination for me. I find I enjoy myself more if I try to stay present in the journey as well. Of course, some journeys are more pleasant than others.

sushipup, I've gotten into a habit of eating little meals, so a full restaurant meal is usually too much food, especially on the road. I try to order off the appetizer menu, or often a la carte, so there's not a lot leftover. It's less about snacking for me, than keeping level blood sugar.

lpinkmountain, I like what's in your cooler. What's gorp?

Indicanoe, that sounds like fun. Ah, the days of reasonable gas prices. I keep expecting it to go up shortly, just about the time I want to hit the road!

We tend not to take driving trips any more but out of habit I still mentally add to my car trip menu. I added a pack of snap pea salad snacks from Trader Joe's and a pack of Jojo candy cane cookies. Umm maybe I need to rethink this issue.

GORP = Good Ol' Rasins and Peanuts

The kind I get has cashews, sunflower seeds, almonds and m&m's too.

I forgot that I used to do granola bars too. But they are also not the healthiest food, at least the store bought kind.

Here's a healthier option, from my FAVORITE chef, Michael Chiarello! I've made these for snacks on field trips I run with my students.

Here is a link that might be useful: Michael's Energy Bars

No can do on the traveling food. Of course we did pack a cooler when the kids were young but now that they are on their own we grab something to drink on our way out the door and stay on the lookout for Mom and Pop cafe's. When we get hungry we stop and ask the locals where is a good place to stop and eat. Once, in a small town in Arkansas, a woman told us to come to eat at her house. That was where the good food was...had I not been such a scardy cat we would have gone to eat at her house. The Cafe' was not great. The woman that invited us to her home was right.

my mom always kept a few spoons in the glove box in case she needed to stop for an emergency pint of ice cream :) nice memory

Jim, spam? lol

We always put a few munchies in the car to hold us over from fast food reststops or local dives. It used to include pretzels, my all time favorite,but now that I'm not eating wheat or yeast, sadly those will have to go. I always bring some mixture of nuts or protein bars for DH, something crunch for me and if handy some fruit like grapes or tangerines. Nothing too messy! We do pick up local goodies on the way or after we reach a destination so they're always in the bag and definitely a cooler to hold DH's water, my sparkling water or diet sodas!

It's funny how many of us like M&M's and consider them roadtrip food. I try and only buy a very small bag, if at all cuz they're so addicting!

We are big on snacks for the kids in our plug in cooler, string cheese, apples, sandwiches and juice boxes. Of course for DH and I we need some snacks, the unhealthier the better.

Stacie

We raised a couple of "foodies". My kids are just like me -- we like the local joints for eating when traveling. If we have snacks in the car, it's always something we've bought along the way that's made locally. For our family, the adventure of searching for and eating local cuisine is half the fun of a trip.

When my sister and I used to vacation together, we'd ALWAYS take a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. You can eat a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, lunch, dinner or a snack--in a pinch. It works any time of day, and needs no refrigeration.

We generally took other snacks, but we also made it a rule that we tried as much as possible to eat decent meals. Never fast food--it's not the best choice on a road trip. Not nourishing enough to keep you going full-bore. Cracker Barrels were one of our favorite places to stop, since you can get a real meal there almost as cheaply as you can eat fast food.