I have returned from taking Rob back to college. More on that later. But right now: road-trip snacks. I’ve taken several road trips this summer, which has given me extensive opportunity to test road-trip snacks. Here are the ones I find I am most interested in eating, while other items I might THINK I would want sit unopened and unloved.
Cookie category:
Famous Amos chocolate-chip cookies
Nilla wafers
Chip/cracker category:
Better Cheddars
Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips
regular Pringles
Snack-cake category:
Entenmann’s Little Brownie Bites
Entenmann’s Brownie Chocolate-Chip Minis
Little Debbie Strawberry Shortcake rolls
Candy category:
Caramel M&Ms
Almond M&Ms
Mike & Ikes (10-flavor box + 4-flavor box + Jolly Joes, mixed together)
Haribo Gummi Fruit Salad
This is of course in addition to food at stops: doughnuts, pizza-by-the-slice, frozen mocha coffees, ice cream in all its delightful forms.
I am very interested to know what your favorites are.
Oh, I love road trip snacks. So much so that I am perpetually disappointed by how short my usual road trips are (3 hours to Portland, 7-8 hours to Missoula).
My very favorite road trip snacks are Smartfood White Cheddar popcorn and Hippeas Vegan White Cheddar chick pea puffs.
So, basically, white cheddar anything.
Our road trip to Missoula is 2 hrs so no snacks. But for trips to MN I always have Cheetos. Crunchy Cheetos. Which I never ever eat any other time. We also start out in the early AM with a sausage and egg McMuffin, which we also never eat except to begin a road trip. And for the sweet tooth it is the sugary orange slice candy.
Salty:
Cheez-its
Ruffles – either plain or cheddar sour cream
Sweet:
Doughnuts – glazed doughnut holes if I’m driving, maple bar or glazed buttermilk if I’m a passenger
Rice Krispie treats
Candy:
Sadly, none. Years of dental problems have caused me to give up all candy.
Fruit:
Clementines or grapes – these are healthy so clearly they cancel out the other snacks
Drinks:
Sonic cranberry slush
Flavored seltzer – bubly apple is my current favorite
Diet Coke
I am also a big believer in the breakfast burrito, mostly because the ones from the place near my house are huge and too hot to eat at first, so I can easily eat a bit every five or ten minutes and make one last a couple hours. (Eating a little at a time constantly helps me stay more awake.)
First, let me mention that I’m gluten free, so my list is restrictive in some categories!
Cookies: Trader Joe’s GF Jo-Jos (similar to Oreos)
Chips/Crackers: Fritos
Snack cakes: Nothing really, but I like the following bars:
Kind Bars
Pamela’s fig bars
Candy:
Caramel M&Ms
Gummy candy, especially Gummy Savers, Swedish Fish, Gummi Bears, Haribo Gummy Peaches
I get really sick of junk and once at an interstate “oasis” I bought a box of “snacking tomatoes” (cherry tomatoes cleverly marketed) and they were SO satisfying. I wanted more.
Omigosh, I thought I was the only adult on earth who still likes Nilla wafers outside of banana pudding! While driving, insert one Nilla in mouth, carefully take a swallow of iced latte=acceptable substitute for dunking while driving. When I can stop at a Love’s Truck Stop (no affiliation), I like their individual cups of fresh fruit chunks complete with a sharpened lollipop stick to stab the chunks for eating while traveling; also the same cups, with veggies and ranch dip. Triscuits.
I LOVE Nilla wafers!! I have to count out a serving size, or I will maraud my way through the whole box! They are also surprisingly expensive in my grocery store-over $4.00 per box!
I’m not the only one who has completely different snack preferences on road trips vs every day, am I?
On road trips, I like twizzlers and combos (pretzel/cheese). I don’t normally even like twizzlers. I also like m&ms (plain or peanut butter), fritos, and pretty much any kind of cookie.
At home, my favorite candy is York peppermint patties, but i don’t really care for them on road trips, i can only eat one at a time or else the flavor is too overpowering.
I feel like an expert because we regularly travel 15 hours across the country in the summer, and this year we drove to the Grand Canyon (70 hours total over 3 weeks) and to Boston (30 hours total). Some of our snacks are old traditions that I no longer care for but have to uphold; however, our list includes: Twizzlers, gummy bears, peanut M & M’s, homemade chocolate chip cookies, Werther’s candies, cheez-its, pringles, those tiny ritz bitz peanut butter crackers, chex mix, quaker yogurt granola bars, and a giant box of assorted chip flavors that I never buy except for road trips. We frequently leave early in the morning and eat breakfast in the car, so in that category: Belvita breakfast bars, pop tarts, those little mini-muffins that come in a bag, or the big muffins from the grocery store bakery. My favorite all time road trip snack is my homemade trail mix: one big jar of roasted peanuts (not honey), one big box of raisins, and a huge bag of peanut butter M & M’s. It’s amazing.
Pretzel/cheese Combos
Almond Joy candy bars
Pringles
Road trip snacking is the best! I love peanut butter m&ms, twizzlers, milky way midnight bars. Bbq Lays potato chips or any chips with the flavor “jalapeno.” Hi-Country beef jerky, old fashioned style, in regular or teriyaki flavor. And I love Mtn Dew and Arby’s curly fries.
Arby’s mozzarella sticks for me :D
ginger snaps, chex mix, white cheddar popcorn, and fruit
flavored fizzy water (just the ones with a hint of flavor)
Peanut M&Ms are a big one for me. I also like Jolly Ranchers because each one lasts for a long time. And Doritos. Because Doritos.
I have a new favorite, which also makes a good work snack: the new Jif PowerUp clusters, in either strawberry or apple cinnamon. DELISH, and as a bonus they have more protein than a lot of road trip-style snacks (I think 6 grams per single-serve bag, and they come in boxes of 5 bags for like $3 at Walmart and Target — in the breakfast aisle by the Nutrigrain bars).
OOH this is interesting to me. I have certain protein needs so I will have to check this out!
For us, road trips usually involve at least one child sleeping, so we try to get quieter things. See also: we usually have kid type snacks. So Nilla wafers, cheezits, graham crackers (I rediscovered graham crackers when I had my kids – so good!), PB crackers, bananas. My husband loves trail mix, but we get the fruit and nut kind only – I don’t like chocolate in my trail mix. Granola bars.
On a recent trip I got some Zingers at a gas station and they were so delicious. I could only eat one at a time, though, they were so sweet I had to save them for several different sittings.
Peanut m&ms and pretzels, eaten alternately
Coke Zero
Cheetos puffs if I’m not driving; these are messy
Jelly belly jellybeans
I generally don’t do road trip snacks (because I’m boring that way – also because that would ruin my appetite for lunch! And I am ALL about lunch when on the road); but if I do snack it’s usually Funyuns or Corn Nuts (both of these items are only consumed if I’m the only one in the car has The Husband hates the smell of both).
Funyuns and Pepsi are the road trip snack of my youth. Oh, the taste of regret later…….
Hot Jalepeno Cheetos
Circus peanuts
Pull and peel licorice
Bags of fun sized chocolate bars – 3 Musketeers, Snickers, Reeses, etc.
We just got back (like an hour ago) from an 8-day road trip with substantial driving every day but two. We were eating a lot of desserts at lunch and dinner so we didn’t have many sweets in the car, but we did have communal Cheez-its and peanut butter-filled pretzels and I had a bag of smoked almonds no one else wanted.
Hershey’s kisses or Whoppers
Kettle chips BBQ or plain
Jelly Belly lollipops
Someone mentioned in your last post dipping Nilla wafers in frosting and I haven’t been able to get that out of my head!
Milanos and mint Milanos were both favorites of my growing up and I’ve continued that. Digestive biscuits. Whatever fruit is most appealing and reasonably non-messy, most often cherries, peaches, apples (nice in season ones only because I am picky), clementines, blueberries, or cherry tomatoes. Wheat Thins. Sometimes some kind of chip. Coffee. Mango Naked juice. Lemonade/ice tea half and half. If I can find it, a loaf of nice crusty bread pulled off in big chunks. Cabot’s Hunter Sharp cheddar or whatever interesting not-too-messy cheese we find (I usually have a passenger to assemble and disassemble things at my bidding). Very occasionally beef jerky which is weirdly a thing I can sometimes eat when I’m feeling kind of sick and having trouble with food (especially weird because we really only buy meat about once a month).
I was an insufferably picky teenager in a lot of ways—pretty much refused to see most cheep junk food as food at all, much to the annoyance of my traveling companions. I’ve kind of managed to train myself out of that but still tend to go into gas stations and wander around dimly staring at things and trying to translate them into food. There’s a fancy co-op I like to splurge at on the way to my parents’ house (though the three hour drive really doesn’t justify it), but if I’m going anywhere else it’s much better if I stock up properly at a grocery store before leaving.
Hubby and I have become obsessed with sunflower seeds. We’re like truckers. Other than that we love baby carrots (so refreshing and crunchy) good and plenty and gummy bears.
My kiddo is young so I haven’t chanced turning a road trip into a ride down Screech Street. We do a lot of carrot sticks, apple slices, seaweed, and cheddar bunnies. Based on that picture, I want to throw caution to the wind.
This imaginary list would make my family would go nuts:
– Pirates Booty (basically cheese flavored air)
– Strawberry Pocky (Japanese-brand, not the knock off Korean one)
– Trader Joe’s brownie bites
– Cheese its
– Soft batch cookies
– Moxie soda
– salt and vinegar chips
– Kebbler strawberry sugar wafers
– walkers shortbread cookies
– pistachios in the shells
– hostess cherry pies
This list would require three separate stops, so likely not happening…
Screech Street made me LOL
Dill pickle potato chips. But apparently I am almost alone in this, because hardly any stores carry them.
Roasted salted nuts
Pretzels and hummus
Biena ranch-flavored crunchy chickpeas (these for real taste very snacky, and are a little nutritious even!)
I basically love movie candy! Twizzlers, Raisinets, Sno-Caps, Reese’s Pieces, and regular M&Ms. For cookies I’ll splurge on Milano’s. For Pringles it’s sour cream and onion. Now I’m ready for a road trip!
Famous Amos chocolate-chip cookies are the BEST road trip snack, forever and ever. I also really like Nilla Wafers. I’ve found that some gas stations have DOUBLE DECKER Little Debbie fudge rounds and oatmeal cream pies and I will always buy them if I see them because they are ridiculous and delicious.
Basically, you and I can never road trip together or we’d be fighting over the snacks the whole time
I eat dill pickle chips on the road and really nowhere else. And Wasabi almonds. And of course lots of diet coke or coke zero, but that’s something I drink at home, too.
salty: Pizzeria Pretzel Combos, Cheddar Chex Mix, Bugles
sweet: Chewy Mini Sweet Tarts (the little round balls), Peanut M&Ms
Road trips are my time to eat junk food with abandon. My favorites are Twizzlers, Cheetos, gummy worms (not Haribo, which I find too tough), snack cakes (ding dongs if I can find them or star crunches or zebra cakes), smarties, and any kind of soda. I also like to stop along the way and try something new. Kosher dill potato chips were a big NO, but jalepeno Cheetos were a yes, though not with Pepsi.
Interests: gas station cappuccinos, Laffy Taffy, Diet Pepsi, Gardetto’s, whatever strikes my fancy as I’m browsing
Disinterests: whatever I brought from home
There’s no Sonic within a half hour’s drive of me, so when I’m driving back and forth across the country at Christmas, there’s at least one Sonic stop on my list—lemon berry freeze, popcorn chicken, tots, and/or mozzarella sticks, etc.
“Interests: gas station cappuccinos, Laffy Taffy, Diet Pepsi, Gardetto’s, whatever strikes my fancy as I’m browsing
Disinterests: whatever I brought from home.”
This is hilarious to me!
Peanut M&Ms, Corn Pops cereal, Fun-Yuns, and popcorn. Also, anyone driving through Texas is lawfully required to stop at a Buc-ee’s rest stop, and I highly recommend their jalapeno pimiento cheese spread on wheat thins.
Cheetos. Grapes. Granola bites.
Since I live on basically the surface of the sun (Phoenix, AZ), snacks that do not melt at room temperature are key. Chocolate is out, because it is terribly messy. My personal choices are sour worms, Doritos and Diet Coke.
Chex mix
Baby carrots, snap peas, grapes
Malted milk balls
Also Coke Zero is the base of my food pyramid on road trips.
What a fun question! Several of my favorites have been mentioned above:
– Cheddar Chex Mix
– SmartFood white cheddar popcorn
– dill pickle chips – but only the Lays brand
– BEEF JERKY oh my goodness
For candy I like pretzel M & Ms, sour Skittles, and occasionally Starbursts. I’m not much into chocolate on road trips.
I usually drink water but an occasional Dr. Pepper hits the spot if I need caffeine.
The best part is that my husband and I have totally different road trip snack preferences, so I don’t have to share.
We have a family tradition of Trader Joe’s gingersnap cookies. I dole out 2-3 every so often.
We have Littles riding along too, so non-melty and non-messy are the top priorities! We usually take goldfish crackers, pretzels, apple slices, mini colored marshmallows, trail mix, and because I only buy them for road trips this is a big deal – Froot Loops. The kids love crunching on them…. and I have been known to eat a few handfuls myself.
Once I had some of that dried mango from Costco and that was a big hit with everyone but it’s too expensive for our regular road trips (around 4 hours). If we ever do a cross country trip I would definitely splurge!
We love Froot Loops in our house too. Also Aldi sells dried mango which is delicious (although full of sugar). My daughter loves it. Very affordable.
Starburst, Pringles, buffalo-pretzel-bite things I don’t know the name/brand of, Clif bars. Maybe those combo things of pretzels or corn chips in the lid and hummus or guacamole in the body respectively. Always a water bottle filled with tap water for each person.
We used to road trip twice a year when my daughter was in college, about a 6 hour drive to her school. We always made ham and havarti sandwiches on hard rolls, that would be our base. Favorite snack things for me would be BBQ chips, a trail mix I would make with dry roasted peanuts, almond m&ms and sesame sticks. For sweet stuff I love Pepperidge Farm Sausalito cookies (lots of crumbs but so yummy), and a really good bar of chocolate, like Lindt with the raspberry filling. I don’t usually like dark chocolate, but I love that combo. Oh, and peanut butter crackers-those are a staple, along with a few bananas. My husband and daughter like Pringles, Twizzlers, and those soft Jolly Rancher candies. Also lots of water because most of the trip is through wilderness, one road-if there is an accident you could be stuck for hours. So TP was also a must! Luckily we never had to venture into the wilds for a pee!
When I moved up here in 1991, my sister drove with me from Chicago-it took us 7 days. We scarfed the mini Reese’s peanut butter cups. I can’t say how many bags we went through. We still talk about that trip!
When I lived in the lower 48-my very favorite way to start a road trip was a Hardee’s breakfast biscuit (or 2), bacon, egg and cheese-they were so, so, so good.
OK, we roadtrip regularly and I have a standard order from nuts.com for snacks about 3 days before we go:
Sour Patch Kids
Sesame Sticks
Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds (these are to be hidden from the children, they don’t appreciate them properly)
Sour Fuzzy Peaches
Mint Cookie Bites
Honey Graham Pretzels
Then we always go to the store and get the freshest Twizzlers we can find and at least one can of Pringles. Sometimes a big bag of Bugles if I can find them.
I drink Pepsi Max and everyone else drinks water, because health or whatever.
So I bought some “fried pickles with ranch” flavor Lay’s chips at Walgreens yesterday. They are pretty good, but not super pickle-y. They taste similar to a sour cream and onion type chip. I also bought “bacon wrapped jalapeno popper” flavor which I am eager to try. (They were on sale and I’m a sucker what can I say)
Your brother has told me about going on a road trip with a friend who made a whole bag of ham buns. Like, a soft roll with ham. He says, “They fit in your hand while driving. Ham buns.”