Well, we are back from our Road Trip!, which was fabulous. Ten days of driving that paused for a five-day stopover with my parents in the middle. My husband planned the trip in such a way that we didn’t get tired of being in the car until the very end. And then we arrived home, and it was wonderful to be back in our own beds, with a weekend to recover before getting back to normal.
And then I woke up with cold symptoms and rapid tests confirmed that I have Covid. The worst souvenir.
So far, I am feeling crummy. But mainly CRANKY.
Cranky at myself. I always anticipated getting Covid at some point; it’s long seemed inevitable. I thought that when I finally got it, I would feel resignation mixed with relief. But I don’t. I am MAD. I got Covid because I took unnecessary risks, and that’s just a fact. Did I expect that * I * was somehow invincible? That Covid would look at the fact that I’ve been pretty measured and cautious over the past two-ish years and say, “Let’s skip her”? That residents of the rural western United States are all roaming around unmasked because Covid doesn’t exist in those areas? Apparently I did expect those things because we relaxed our typical restrictions on our trip and I got Covid. We ate out in restaurants A LOT. We went into museums and gas stations and gift shops and sometimes we just left our masks in the car. We attended events with lots of other people and pretended that the outdoor venues would protect us. I was uncareful and I KNEW I wasn’t being careful and I got Covid. So I feel cranky and mad and a little ashamed and my head feels like a stress ball that’s being squeezed so intensely you can see the little beads inside it through the membrane. PLUS I somehow forgot to do the Wordle yesterday and it RESET my winning streak.
For posterity’s sake, my symptoms: It started with a scratchy throat. So lightly scratchy that it was easy enough to write it off as irritation from staying in so many hotels (I was getting irritated with being on the road, those last couple of days; why not my throat, too?), or the change in atmosphere/climate as we drove eastward toward home. Then a day of an even sorer throat, with an irresistible tickle that could only be soothed by chain-lozenging menthol cough drops. Then a day where the throat felt better and the cough was less persistent. Now, Day 4, I am in the Head in a Vise stage. I am isolating in my bedroom, which fortunately has its own bathroom, but I am resentful and grumpy and have to get up to staunch my runny nose every few minutes.
In response to my recent Road Trip! post, several people mentioned snacks – a couple offered specifics; others were more general.
But it made me realize that I am Very Eager to discuss Road Trip! snacks.
When I was a kid, my dad would buy rolls of Necco Wafers and hand them around. We had to take the wafer we were offered, so there was always the immense danger of getting the licorice flavored one. He was also a big fan of Planters Heat Peanuts. My mom, I seem to remember, perhaps incorrectly, enjoyed things like Chex Mix.
For me, a Road Trip! is all about the chips. Aside from tortilla chips (which I eat occasionally), I hardly ever buy chips. This is because I LOVE chips and will eat an entire bag in one sitting. So chips are a real treat for me, and that’s my go-to snack for Road Trips. My favorites are Barbecue Lays, Miss Vickie’s Jalapeno, and Doritos Salsa Verde, the latter being a variety I don’t see in gas stations that often anymore.
I have also recently become… well, obsessed isn’t the right word for it. Infatuated with? Yes. I have recently become infatuated with Skinnypop, despite the irritating name. My daughter got me into it; I think parents often buy individual bags of Skinnypop for birthday party snacks, and maybe they offer Skinnypop as one of the snacks at school; I’m not quite sure about anything that goes on in my kid’s life when I’m not around. Anyway, she liked Skinnypop first and asked for it enough that I ended up trying it. Now we buy it by the giant package at Costco. I love it. Don’t get me wrong – I would much prefer a giant bowl of freshly popped popcorn drenched – drenched – in butter, but Skinnypop is really quite delicious. So I might consider adding it to my Road Trip! snack repertoire.
While I am much more interested in salty things than in sweet things, sometimes the best chaser for a bag of spicy chips is a bag of Twizzler Nibs. Or maybe a Milky Way Midnight bar.
And I rarely ever drink soda these days, but I do love a nice frosty bottle of Diet Mountain Dew.
I may or may not indulge in my traditional Road Trip! snacks on this particular Road Trip!. They are not, as you might have already intuited, keto friendly. But my husband has already decided that he is NOT sticking to keto while we are on our trip, and that makes it much harder for me to stick to it.
(I have yet to find keto chips I like. I tried the Quest Chili Lime chips, which were WONDERFULLY crunchy and had a nice chili lime flavor. But the chili lime flavor, though strong, was not strong enough to disguise the flavor of the chips themselves which I find to be oddly bitter.)
Speaking of my husband: I feel like I should KNOW what kind of Road Trip! snacks are his favorite. But I… have no idea. Maybe he doesn’t have one or two repeat snacks that he always eats? Maybe he goes for a wide variety? Maybe I am so hyperfocused on my own snacking that I become completely oblivious to those around me? I am not sure. Honestly, I don’t even know what I would buy for him if he sent me into the gas station with instructions to pick him out a snack. Some.. Sun Chips? That seems like the wrong answer.
My daughter LOVES snacks and LOVES treats, so you know she is going to have many, many requests. If I were to choose something for her, I’d probably pick a trifecta of Cheetos or Cheez-Its, something weird (like a plunger shaped lollipop that you dip into a toilet bowl filled with sugar – yes, this is something she purchased with her own money recently), and something sweet. She likes most (all???) sweets, so I’m not even sure what I would choose for her, but I think she would probably like it.
Now, I have been speaking mainly of gas station treats. But Road Trips! are an opportunity to eat fun fast food, too. If you like fast food. I don’t particularly care for it, I have to say. So usually I vote for Arby’s so I can at least order curly fries. When I was a kid, Subway was our fast food stop of choice, and I do enjoy a six inch Spicy Italian sub on whole wheat with no cheese, plenty of spicy mustard. I don’t know if I would enjoy it quite as much now. But I suppose we will have a chance to find out!
So now it is your turn! Tell me, in detail, your FAVORITE Road Trip! snacks – sweet, savory, and any other category.
My husband and I are busy planning our Road Trip! for later this summer and a fun part of that is considering what we need (“need”) to buy to make the Road Trip! as fun as possible. This is going to be a LONG road trip, taking place over the course of ten days. So it’s not your normal drive to Grandma’s house. Well, in our case, it IS a drive to Grandma’s house but Grandma’s house is on the other side of the country so it will take quite some time to get there and get home.
So far, here’s what we have bought:
A little backseat organizer for Carla. She can use it to set up her iPad, so she can watch without straining her neck (My current plan is to enforce the two-hours-of-screen-time-per-day restriction we have, even though she will be in the car. We’ll see how long this lasts. But I grew up with a father who continually asked me to look at the scenery while we were driving, and – despite the fact that I found it very irritating at the time – I seem to have absorbed that philosophy to a cellular level.) (Also, when I was a kid, I read books and played with a Gameboy on a teensy screen and never suffered from “neck strain,” so Carla doesn’t really NEED a specific organizer to address this non-problem.) Right. We are talking about the organizer, not about my inherited road trip ascetism. She can use it to store… things. Colored pencils? A stuffed animal? Masks? Snacks? I don’t really know WHAT things, but she does tend to accumulate a lot of stuff, and my husband cannot stand a messy car (I resigned myself to a messy car long ago), so the entire organizer is really for my husband’s sanity. My husband really wanted to get one of the organizers that had a little fold down tray, but ***MORBID THOUGHTS ALERT*** my mind instantly went to decapitation in case of a car accident because that is how my brain works, and I managed to persuade him to find something else.
image from amazon.com
A foldable, waterproof trash canthat can hang off the back of one of the front seats. Again, this is mainly for my husband’s sanity. My whole life, I have been perfectly fine using a plastic bag from a gas station to collect snack wrappers and soda cans, and tossing it at the next gas station where you inevitably pick up a new one. But my husband enjoys having the exact right thing for every situation, and if it is helping him feel excited about the trip, and if it helps reduce his stress/irritation during the trip, then I am all for it.
image from amazon.com
Road trip journal. This is also for Carla. One thing that I do NOT have trouble spending money on is Fun Travel Treats. One thing I remember with such fond joy about trips with my parents is that my mom always made these little kits full of fun surprises that we could open during the trip. Usually they would include things like a fresh tablet of drawing paper and a brand-new package of colored pencils or markers, maybe a new Barbie, a new book, a workbook of some sort, or maybe a book of paper dolls. OMG – do paper dolls still exist? I don’t think Carla has ever encountered a paper doll, and I wonder if she would like them? Wow. I have gotten really off topic. Anyway: I LOVED these little treats, and they made the travel part of trips so much more fun, and so I like to get Carla little treats as well. My husband doesn’t really get this, though, so I have to wheedle a bit. Like, he would disapprove of a new pack of colored pencils because Carla already has a million colored pencils. He just doesn’t understand that part of the cache is that the pencils are NEW. ANYWAY I keep trying to redirect myself and it is like pulling a jumbo jet with a jump rope tied to its nose. We got this road trip journal for Carla as a Fun Travel Treat. She likes journals (at least, she likes the idea of journals; she is my daughter through and through) and I am hoping this will help her feel engaged with the trip.
image from amazon.com
A family card game for the car. Admittedly, I may be the only one of the three of us who has any interest in this Loaded Questions game. But it sounds fun, to me, and I like the idea of being able to play a game together that doesn’t involve a screen.
A fun snack. I chanced upon a display of vegan peanut butter caramel coated popcorn the last time I was at Trader Joe’s and grabbed a bag. I may end up kicking myself for not grabbing multiple bags. But we will SAVE IT for our Road Trip! and I am anticipating that at the very least it will be fun to try.
image from traderjoes.com
Things we are still considering, but haven’t yet purchased:
A fresh tablet of drawing paper. Carla loves to draw, and I know how absolutely wonderful it is to have a FRESH tablet of drawing paper, ready to be filled with creations.
image from amazon.com
A travel atlas. I think this would be fun, but am not 100% sure Carla would read most of it. Plus, how many giant books do we need rattling around in the car with us?
image from amazon.com
A cooler. My husband is CONVINCED that we need a cooler. Again, I direct you to my childhood, during which we never needed a cooler. Now, maybe a cooler would be nice, but in that case, I petition for a VERY CHEAP cooler. My husband, on the other hand, wants a Yeti cooler that costs – I SHIT YOU NOT – $350. My very blunt response to that was, “I will never be okay with spending $350 on a cooler.” I told him that my upper range for cooler expenditure is $50. It does not matter if the Yeti cooler keeps ice from melting for three weeks. We do not need that kind of cooling duration. Now, I can fully imagine people for whom the $350 Yeti cooler is practical or a necessity. If you make your living as an ice fisherperson, perhaps; or if you live in the Australian Outback. And other situations, surely. But for me, it is a Startling ExpenseTM Swistle and I cannot do it. My husband has done extensive research – which involved us going to a sporting goods store and looking at physical coolers, so we could see which size would work best for our very limited needs – and I think we have landed on this one. It is within my $50 threshold, and I DO think having a cooler will be useful for other situations I have yet to consider.
image from amazon.com
Another family game. Carla and her friends love playing Would You Rather? and it might be a fun way for the three of us to interact while we drive… but then again, it’s fairly easy to come up with questions on your own. I don’t know. Still debating.
image from amazon.com
A travel pillow. I tend to fall asleep immediately in the car, but then my head continually sags forward onto my chest and then snaps up and then sags forward and then snaps up ad infinitum. I would LOVE to find a travel pillow that keeps my head from doing this, but I feel like I have tried ALL the travel pillows and I have yet to find one that works, so I am not terribly hopeful.
A set of paper dolls. They DO still make paper dolls! I am not sure if Carla would like them – but at least she would find them briefly diverting. Now, do I go for the Anne of Green Gables version? The Little Women version? The Nancy Drew version? Carla might like this “fashions of Edith Head” version best – she is very into fashion design lately. Ah, but it looks like it requires scissors (rather than the pieces being perforated), and Carla isn’t going to know who any of the subjects are (Audrey Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland). So maybe we won’t do paper dolls after all. At least not for this trip.
image from amazon.comimage from amazon.com
What are some of the Utmost Necessities you’ve found useful on a Road Trip!?
