The North and the South
And everything in between!
Morning, friends! Yesterday was a LONG day of travel. Ugh. As much as I love going home, the drive back and forth is something that I am definitely content with only doing once or twice a year. For shorter trips, we fly, but because we were going home for such a long time and wanted to take the dogs with us, we drove. Again—ugh.
The trip is about 19 hours, so we were on the road by 5 and crawling into bed around 1:00 last night. We were both exhausted! We traded off the driving pretty regularly, but a trip like that is just long and unpleasant, any way you cut it.
Anywho. We’re home now!
And we had good eats on the way!
Well, good for a road trip anyway 
After my cliff bar and frosted animal crackers dinner disaster on the way down to Louisiana, I decided to take matters into my own hands for the trip back. I had an arsenal of veg-friendly eats this time!
I started off breakfast with some hemp granola, soy milk, and an apple:
I actually used most of this soy milk for my coffee, but I drank the rest of it. It was good—SWEET, but good. Definitely more of a dessert treat than anything else.
For a mid-morning snack, my hand founds its way to a bag of trail mix I packed. In the mix: almonds, pistachios, dried cherries, dried cranberries, and raisins. Is it just me, or do you like to get a piece of every “option” when eating trail mix?
For lunch, we both had almond butter sandwiches. Mine was with banana, Ryan’s was with blackberry jam. Baxter made his way into the lunch sack at one of our bathroom breaks and managed to steal a bite of Ryan’s sandwich—guess he prefers jam over bananas—lucky for me!
We also had a box of Mary’s Gone Crackers of which I probably had 15-20 over the course of the trip.
Around 6:00, dinner rolled around: quinoa with roasted root vegetables. Pretty fancy for a road trip, right? Thus the benefits of packing your own dinner!
I cooked up a pot of quinoa last night while we were packing, and added the leftover roasted veggies from our early birthday dinner, plus some cherry tomatoes:
Yum! This was SO much better than anything we would have gotten on the road! Plus, packing all our own eats meant less stops along the way.
Around 11:30, I ate a Maple Nut Clif bar, more out of boredom than anything else. Oops. I also ate a few unpictured Newman O’s…funny how those always go unpictured, right?
Today is going to be CRAZY busy—we have SO much to do! I need to unpack, work on my syllabi for next semester, complete some grading for my online classes, go to the grocery store, CLEAN the house, take down our Christmas decorations…Lordy, the list goes on and on!!!
I’ll be back for a break at lunch—hopefully I’ll have at least some of that list crossed off!
Glad you got home safe girl!
Wow 19 hours–goodness gracious I can’t even imagine.
So glad you didn’t run into any bad weather to make the trip longer!
Nice job packing your eats – quinoa and roasted veggies would be so satisfying! That Very Vanilla Silk is super sweet; I think it was the first soymilk I tried and I thought it was good… now a bit too sweet. Good thing there are plain and plain unsweetened brands out there for when you are adding it to stuff and don’t need a vanilla sugar flavor
The drive home is always the worst. Glad you’re home safe and sound!
Great job packing travel meals!!
Glad you made it home safely! We sure do miss you!!
Yummy looking quinoa! My husband and I started packing our meals on long road trips too. So much healthier and you don’t feel blah when you arrive to your destination!
I’m totally OCD about trail mix and keeping it even. Except once I ran out of PB chips and went through one of my trail mixes to pick them out. Woops
I see that you had a taste of Washington with the Pink Lady Apple
Glad you made it home safely.
Glad you finally got home…what a LONG time!! I love love love pink lady apples…they are definitely the best!
Glad you made it home safely! That is one long trip!
I’m so impressed that you guys made it in one go! Glad you made it home safe and sound!
Did you listen to/finish “The Art of Racing in the Rain?”
Happy you made it home safely!