I love a good road trip. Far, near, don’t care. Few hours down to the Keys, out into the Everglades, up to the lakes region or further north, across the desert, wherever. Road trips can get pricey, though, if you’re eating every meal in restaurants and sleeping in fancy hotels every night. Being all vegetarian and mostly vegan (I’d happily eat vegan every meal, but if I do eat out, I don’t get too picky about what’s in the bread or throw a tantrum if they forgot to leave off the cheese), sometimes getting a meal in a restaurant is a challenge anyway, so it’s easier to make my own.
So, here’s 5 ways to decrease your budget on road trips:
We went up to Gainesville this past weekend for the husband’s graduation. While there, we explored as best we could with the massive storm system moving through the area.
My sister and I headed out to Ocracoke on the Outer Banks of NC for a couple of nights of camping. For someone who’s planning a trip on a research vessel in the ocean, she really likes restaurants so the first night, we ate at Dagio’s.
The second night, we broke out the random camp ingredients and made beans and rice with veggie dogs in a blanket.
I was trying to explain this last night to friends; I have a love-hate relationship with Miami. It has tons of culture and a thriving arts community, cool architecture — art deco, Mediterranean, modern…certainly some of their newer buildings around Miami-Dade county are more visually appealing than some of the boring boxy glass towers Broward has let get thrown up — funky signage, diversity of people and activities… There’s a lot to see and do and experience and a vibrancy you can feel. It’s also full of the most insane traffic this side of L.A., terrible drivers, illogical parking — when you can find it, — rudeness and entitlement stemming from that sort of obsession with hyper-coolness I can’t begin to understand.Continue reading →
This past weekend we we camping with friends who had never been camping before and who had never been down to Everglades National Park before. I wanted to make sure they ate well on the trip because A) I like to eat well when camping, B) I like showing people it doesn’t always have to be a pack of hot dogs cooked on a stick, and C) I wanted to convince them camping was fun and they should do it again.
So, our most recent roadtrip took us from Las Vegas out to Long Beach. The shortest distance between two points might be a straight line, but there are very few straight roads out in the mountains and that’s no fun anyway.
So, it’s a hundred degrees or so, and you don’t want to break out the stove. Or, you want to go hiking and have a hot meal when you get back. Or, you still have 400 miles to drive before you reach camp for the night.
Time to do some dashboard cooking.
Dashboard cooking works best if you’re not going to be in the car. The greenhouse effect that happens when the sun beats down and gets trapped (the same reason you shouldn’t leave dogs and kids in the car) heats up food much more efficiently if you don’t have the A/C on inside. That said, as long as your food isn’t on a vent, you can still warm things up fairly well. It just takes longer — figure about twice the time. Continue reading →
When most people think “camping,” they don’t necessarily think “crockpot.” Fair enough, but if you’re planning to spend a few nights at a campsite with readily-available electricity, it makes for some pretty easy rice and bean dishes.
For some reason, the husband brought along the crock pot when we went on the Crystal River/Ichetucknee Springstrip. When we drive places, he sometimes packs like we might never return. (After that road trip through the desert in the rented Altima, I have to admit he might be onto something. Aside from the cats being the only thing keeping us from just renting an apartment and starting over in several of the towns we passed, we nearly ended up sleeping off one of the Indian Roads in New Mexico because we got the car stuck.)
We traveled with friends and for some reason, even though these two are regular participants in our Friday night #vegandinnerparty group cooking habit or maybe because of, none of us really talked about what food we were bringing and what we weren’t. Which meant, our nightly dinners turned into a game of figuring out what we could make out of the random things we’d brought.
The first night, we got in rather late so we were looking for “easy.” For meat eaters, this would have been the hot dogs or burgers night, so the vegetarians went a similar route. We had a can of Northern beans we cooked on the camp stove, a bag of Gardein veggie burgers, some rice cheese slices, condiments, and sliced wheat bread. We also had some salsa and chips and some sort of side salad that for the life of me, I cannot recall the exact content of anymore. I want to say it was like a pasta salad rather than a chopped salad, which is possible.
The second night, we broke out the crock pot and evaluated our ingredients.
A can of pinto beans, black beans, and another can of Northern beans.
The biggest container of garlic powder I’ve ever seen.
Jars of oregano, “salad sprinkle,” and cilantro.
A box of Minute brown rice.
A small bottle of canola oil.
An onion.
A tomato.
We ended up cooking half the rice in the crock pot while cutting up the Field Roast sausage and frying it a little on the camp stove with part of the onion. We then added that to the rice along with the can of pinto beans, some of the garlic powder, and a bit of the salsa. Left it on low while we sat around the campfire drinking wine and talking. It was actually quite tasty and filling enough for four people.
The third night, we did the same thing with the Tofurkey and the other half of the rice. This time, we used the can of tomato soup and a little water to cook the rice in, added the black beans, the tomato, more garlic powder, and some of the faux cheddar. We also had a few whole wheat burrito wraps (that I brought to go with the tofu scramble I pre-made) so I ate mine as a wrap. Everyone else just ate it on a plate. Again, more than enough for four people and super-easy.
Plus, the crock pot was easier to clean than the cast iron cookware.
We woke up at the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, AZ. I have to admit that I love the Wigwam Motel and I have since before I stayed there the first time back in 2001. It’s kitschy and historical and small and inexpensive and clean and surrounded by antique cars — it checks off so many things on ideal-place-to-stay list. Yes, I realize a lot of people want room service or an infinity pool or a fitness room and all that’s great for a resort or a conference hotel, but road trip? I’m all about the cheap, cool spots.
The Wigwam Motel and Historic 66 and all the accompanying stuff are about 18 miles or a half hour drive from the Petrified Forest National Park. The northern end of the Petrified Forest starts the Painted Desert and part of it is included in the park (or a separate but attached wilderness area, if you want to get technical). I think most people come into the park(s) from the northern end through the Painted Desert Visitor Center. It has the restaurant, the bigger visitor area, gift shops. The entry lanes are bigger, too, and it’s closest to the interstate. I have to recommend, though, if you can come in from the southern end of the park in the morning, it’s pretty great.
I’m not a fan of big crowds and the southern end is less crowded so you get the chance to walk among the large petrified logs with fewer people, explore a little more. And as you pass through the Badlands and on to the Painted Desert, you get some incredible, almost surprise, vistas.
At the marker for where the old Route 66 once passed through the National Park
Plus, if you’ve stayed in Holbrook the night before, you can have a late lunch in the restaurant on the northern end after your exploring. Or, at least that’s what we ended up doing. For the record, not a lot of vegetarian options, but everyone recommends the Navajo Taco, which you can get without meat or cheese. That basically turns it into an iceberg and tomato salad on Navajo bread but the bread is filling enough. (And fattening aplenty!)
Recipe for Navajo Fry Bread, which evolved out of the mid-1800s when about 8000 Navajo were basically held prisoner at Fort Sumner, NM with little more than flour and lard to eat. It’s considered disrespectful to turn down fry bread if it’s offered to you by a traditional family.
5 cups of flour
2 tablespoons of baking powder
2 tablespoons of salt
2 cups of lukewarm water (not too hot, not too cold)
1.5 cups corn or canola oil
cast iron skillet
Mix up everything but the oil until the dough is “fluffy.” Put the oil in a skillet and heat until a pinch of dropped dough floats instead of sinking. Flatten out balls of dough (think fair food elephant ears) and fry until golden.
Back out on the road, we headed for Winslow, AZ. Winslow’s claim to fame is that certain Eagles’ song. I’ve heard that song like every good Southern Girl who’s ever been to any event mixing their “butt rock” (friend’s term for Southern Rock, 70s quasi-folk bands, and early pop-y hair bands) with country (the pre-Garth Brooks kind). The lyric just never resonated with me in the Eagles’ song. No, all my Winslow associations come courtesy of Tori Amos being “in the wrong song.” (Yes, I totally made the husband listen to a CD with “Springtime of His Voodoo” on it a few dozen times between Holbrook and Winslow. And, yes, now I’ve guaranteed none of you will want to road trip with me.)
There’s also a really cool old couple of train cars in a park a few blocks from “The Corner” if you have time to poke around town.
From Winslow, we headed west to the Grand Canyon. Now, unlike Episode 3‘s trip from Van Horn to Santa Rosa, which Google had estimated taking just over 8 hours, including a detour we didn’t take, or Episode 4‘s batshit drive time of an estimated 11.5 hours, not including the absurd detours, the trip from Holbrook, through the Petrified Forest and up to the Grand Canyon via Highways 89 and 64 (East Rim Drive), was only supposed to take about five hours. Note, when planning a road trip, don’t plan to drive more than five hours a day unless you’re a long-haul trucker who plans to see the sites while peeing in a bottle at 70mph.
Five hours was even reasonable enough that we pulled over at Sunset Crater and took some pictures, stretched our legs, that sort of thing. Imagine! And it would still be daylight when we got to our destination!
Well, sort of. Note the storm clouds in that second picture up there. The first time I saw the Grand Canyon was in 2001 and I was on a road trip with a friend who might have at some point in Pinetop-Lakeside, AZ decided that I was as insane as my husband decided around Santa Rosa and certainly knew by the time we drove through a canyon on Indian Service Rte 9 southwest of Pueblo Pintado at dusk.
Along the comparably smaller canyon on Hwy 89, there are usually stalls with vendors selling food and jewelry, but the weather was so bad none of them were really staffed. Driving along East Rim, the view was amazing, but by the time we got to the visitor center it was drizzling rain and cold. (Summer doesn’t find the Grand Canyon quite the same way it finds Fort Lauderdale or Van Horn.)
At the next overlook, we stopped and too photos, explored a little and got back to the rental car as it started thundering. At which point we discussed our sleeping options for the night since we had a campsite booked at Mather Campground and, it being early July, every hotel room was booked in Grand Canyon Village, Tusayan, Williams, probably even Flagstaff. Not good. Especially after the crazy drive the day before. We wanted to get somewhere and eat and get a good night’s sleep.
We decided to drive into Grand Canyon Village and play it by ear and by the time we got into the Village the weather was clearing so we headed over to the campground to check out the situation. Now, if you remember me saying how early I booked our site at Santa Rosa in Episode 2, you should guess I booked the campsite at Mather about eight months before the trip. When I booked, I had a pretty good choice of spaces and I’d picked on near a restroom and not too far from the showers at the entrance to the campground. When we got there, the place was booked solid. Full. I don’t mean full in a small campground kind of way. I mean, full in that the number residents of Mather on any given summer night might be higher than the population of the town I grew up in. Score on my spot picking.
We cooked some dinner, relaxed, and talked about driving back over to the rim to check it out, but ultimately decided we’d sat on the rim at night and listened to the wildlife and seen the bats and as awesome as that was, we were exhausted. Plus, Mather isn’t terribly close to a good overlook unless you’re in the mood to drive or really put in a long walk.
We woke up and ate in Van Horn because even people with a cooler (and two bags) full of food don’t turn away from free continental breakfast. Well, he didn’t. (I brought my own high-protein bagel and vegan cream cheese in to toast and spread while he ate danishes and Texas-shaped waffles.
We explored Van Horn a bit, admired the awesome signage a bit longer, and headed north to Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
We went for a brief hike, ate some dashboard burritos, and headed on up the road to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Where Guadalupe was hot and dusty except for a small spring, the Caverns are cool and damp (and crowded that time of year). If you wanted to take long-exposure photos, linger on the footpaths, or do some of the more hardcore tours, I’d recommend winter, a part of winter when everyone else is working or in school. Still, pretty awesome stuff.
By the time we got back on the surface, it was already getting late. Like dinnertime late, but we still had too many miles to drive to get to our next stay (camping at Santa Rosa State Park), so we grabbed some plain baked potatoes from a Wendy’s to add our own cheese and salsa to when we stopped again and headed on northward.
In Roswell, we stopped at a grocery store for a couple of supplies, waited in maddening Fourth of July cookout-supply crowds, and stopped at a rest area just north of there to eat and watch the sun set.
On the road to Santa Rosa, we caught the town fireworks show and once we rolled into town, it seemed we may have missed a parade. Cute little town, but also had a worn, sort of sad look. Then, we only really caught the parts along Route 66 before we headed up to the park so maybe we missed the shiny sections. Still, you know how I like dusty.
It wasn’t exactly easy getting the tent set up in the dark. All the other campers were settled in for the night, though the group at the RV across the lane from us played music on a small radio well into the night. Still, we used the headlights sparingly because we didn’t want to disturb anyone and flashlights are only so bright. If we hadn’t owned that tent for more than a decade and set the thing up in all sorts of places over the years, I don’t imagine we’d have managed to get it put together, the air mattress blown up, and everything else put away as tired as we were.
Sunrise made it all worth it, though. Totally gorgeous. The state park spot cost us about $20 and the park had showers and flush toilets. (If you aren’t familiar with the lingo, vault toilets are the kind that are essentially a hole in the ground with a porta-potty style seat and maybe sanitizer dispensers in lieu of sinks and running water.) If I’m out camping or hiking or something for a few days, I’m fine with peeing in the woods, vault toilets, and not showering, but since we planned to be in the car, stopping at various places some of which would be around other, non hikers, showering was kind of a must. My hair in humid climates is bridge-troll greasy eight hours after I’ve washed it. For some bizarre reason, desert climates make it even greasier.
I picked our camp spot when I paid almost a year before the trip. At the time, we were one of three campers booked for the night. By the time we got there to set up, the park was full. If we hadn’t had a reservation, we’d have been out of luck. As it was, because I booked so early, we got a great spot!
We went up to Gainesville this past weekend for the husband’s graduation. While there, we explored as best we could with the massive storm system moving through the area.
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Neliza Drew 
