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.
If I stick to it, though, I will survive by eating copious amounts of Zero Sugar York Peppermint Patties and Zero Sugar Reese’s Miniature Cups which Swistle has been recommending for a long time and I just recently tried. They are SO GOOD and do not taste like keto food; they taste like treats.
(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.
life of a doctor's wife 
OH GOSH. Pringles. Mike & Ike’s, which I seem to want only on road trips; I like the ten-flavor assortment box. Cheddar Sunchips. Kettle corn. Caramel and/or almond and/or peanut M&Ms. Haribo gummy peaches. Nilla wafers. Charleston Chew rollers.
We don’t really have go-to road trip snacks, which isn’t to say we don’t snack in the car, just that there’s nothing we always get. If we’re going to the beach, though, we have to stop at Taco Bell, and not just any Taco Bell, but the one right after the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. It’s an ironclad tradition. Dairy Queen is not quite as mandatory, but quite common.
Aw yiss, let’s dish on the snacks! I am obsessed with jalapeno chips and Mrs. Vicks are the best out there. I don’t get Subway very often, but when I do it’s a 6 inch spicy Italian with oil and vinegar dressing and a bag of Mrs. Vicks.
I’m in the same boat as you where I don’t want fast food at any other time besides road trips. I like my annual Big Mac and then I’m good. I can’t remember the last time I had Arby’s fries but yes I could sure go for some.
For our car vacations I usually make a batch of banana bread muffins with chocolate chips for the boys. I can take them or leave them but the boys love them and they work well to fill in the cracks of the teenage metabolism.
I FEEL SEEN. I love salty snacks, but especially chips, and I never buy them because I will eat them all, even the giant Costco bags. Like, in one sitting. I have no shut-off valve when it comes to chips. When I was a kid I loved Old Dutch Ketchup chips, which I think is only a Western Canadian thing, or at least it was then. I still would eat the hell out of a box (they came in boxes) now. I love Miss Vickie’s chips, but mostly salt and vinegar. In Maui, there is a special kind of chip called Maui Onion and I generally do not like onion, but those are incredible.
Lately I have not been able to source Boom Chicka Pop which means I have been eating Skinnypop and I do love it. I like all the flavours, including the kettle corn and the sweet vanilla, which is a weird thing but here we are.
Peppermint patties, I love them, and I didn’t know there was a no-sugar option. Ditto with Reece.
I do love Subway in terms of fast food! Wendy’s is our other favourite. We rarely stop for food while traveling (we’re the pack-from-home type), but of what we bring along, the snacks are always the favourite. The kids tolerate the sandwiches and live for the snacks and I know it’s the #1 to keep my kids happy in the car. I do try to time these things or else even snacks lose their luster; as in, when it’s 10:00 you may have X. And then at 11 you may have X. There is a lot of snacking.
We tend to enjoy salty snacks in the car (though that requires more water, which requires more stops for the bathroom, so there is some very faulty logic here).
My husband’s favourite snack would be beef jerky and it is almost only ever purchased at a gas station en route.
I LOVE Twizzlers but hate them in Nibs form. So ironic and seeing that picture reminded me of my deep disdain for Nibs. Why? The texture? I binge eat of strawberry flavoured Twizzlers every year for my birthday and at Christmas and that’s about the extent of my chewy candy consumption for the year.
Reese’s PB Cups are superfood. I rarely take them on trips because they get all melty…but they are just pure deliciousness.
And now I’m hungry…
Prior to getting married, I rarely had chips in my house. Because I am an abstainer. My husband is a total moderator. He does the grocery shopping so I know what snacks he would like since he buys them regularly for our house. Luckily my gluten intolerance prevents me from eating much of what he buys, but not all of it. He will sometimes buy a carton of ice cream that has gluten, so only he can eat it. And he can sit down with an 1/2 gallon of ice cream and a spoon and he will eat less than I would if I dished some ice cream into a bowl for myself. It’s mind-boggling!! I would never sit down with a carton of ice cream and a spoon. I could eat a ridiculous amount and then would regret it and feel awful afterwards!
My favorite road trip snacks are salty things, like potato chips, doritos, cheese curls, etc. But I also like sweet candies like gummy bears or sour patch kids. And those are things my husband likes as well. We also enjoy drinking soda on drives – I get a coke and he typically get dr. pepper. But we have never really been on a road trip before. We drive about 3-3.5 hours to my parents and that drive is always horribly painful with kids so I can not bear the thought of driving further. But someday I am sure we will take a road trip!
Re: the keto Reeses and peppermint patties- check and see if they have Maltitol and if they do, go slow and easy. Really that is generally true of commercial keto sweets in general. You do NOT want to be in a car with stomach upset! lol
Car trip snacks- Cheetos crunchy, muddy buddies are two go-tos. I wouldn’t turn down a donut or a Crumbl cookie either! If I’m in keto mode then a quest bar or quest chips (loaded taco) or some salami, cheese and apple slices.
Fast food- Make it Chickfila!
I don’t like anything particularly messy if I’m the driver, so I tend to go for bite-size: pretzel nuggets, individually wrapped chocolates, that kind of thing. I don’t have a One True Road-Trip snack choice, it’s the whim of the moment.
Oddly enough, my family never had road trip snacks. Like, nothing. What we did was make a big deal of stopping at those ubiquitous restaurants you find while traveling. My dad loved a good greasy spoon!
I too have an unhealthy love for chips. Those jalapeno Miss Vickie’s are SO good. I grin every time I see them because after Dave had his first Y-90 treatment (targeted radiation spheres in his liver) he had to lie flat on his back for a while. They gave him instructions for home that said no spicy food. Then they brought him a meal, which I had to feed to him because he was flat on his back.
It included, you guessed it, a bag of Miss Vickie’s jalapeno chips! We cracked up because they were SO hot and spicy, but also so good that we couldn’t stop eating them. I fed one to Dave, one to me (to minimize his intake of spicy food … ahem …) and after that I could never see a bag of those without thinking fondly of that night. I wish they sold them in my local stores!
You guys are going to have the BEST trip, I love all of your fun food choices!
I usually am really boring and just pack carrots and water for roadtrips. I find I snack when I’m bored, so I try to just have something reasonably crunchy and healthy. We also don’t generally stop at fast food places because my husband can’t safely eat there, so…very boring.
BUT. There is an oasis on the Illinois tollway (Belvidere!) where there is a popcorn place called Doc Popcorn and if we drive by this shop, I will purchase a small bag of better butter, jalapeno, and caramel corn and mix them all up and have a delicious mix of popcorn that I will snack on forever. Other people may have a favorite mix of Doc Popcorn, but that is mine.
We don’t get Miss Vickie’s Jalapeno chips which is a shame because I’m sure I’d like them. I’ve always preferred MilkyWay Midnight. Our road trip snacks lean more toward veggies and chunks of cheese. Inspired by you I suppose I could branch out though…
Always Chex Mix, Muddie Buddies, Peanut M&M’s, gummy worms. Along the way we stop for donuts. Never get donuts, unless on a road trip.
Sour patch kids and pretty much any chips. Fizzy water, or Diet Coke if I’m feeling indulgent.
I had to laugh because it is engrained into me that chips are NEVER to be eaten in the car, never mind cheetos!!! We do crackers (wheat thins and cheezits mostly) or pretzels. Also no chocolate because too melty. I do like skittles on road trips though.
Our favorite road trip snacks vary because we like to let everyone go into the gas station when we stop for gas and everyone gets to pick one snack and one treat and one drink. (Drink and treat can overlap if you want a treat drink.) Ryan always gets a Hershey bar and a bag of Doritos but the rest of us vary and pick whatever sounds good at the time. Elizabeth and I like to get root beer and cream soda and each drink half of both. I always want sour cream and onion lays. And sometimes peanut M&Ms. I also have a stomach of steel and I am willing to eat things like gas station hot dogs and tamales so I get those sometimes too.
We have a number of standards for road trips! Part of that could be the fact that we tend to drive to the same places over and over to see friends and family.
Gummi bears and some random crunchy thing for my husband. Diet Coke and Dr. Pepper and he lets me decide which of the two I want. I also always have a water bottle with me.
I always love peanut butter filled pretzels, Herrs Sour Cream and Onion chips (extra points if they have ruffles), Reese’s peanut butter cups, starbursts. I also love the Ice Breakers Duo Watermelon flavor. Take 5, Milkway, Twix might also be called into service to satisfy the chocolate craving. Rice Crispy Treats are almost only consumed on road trips these days, but not every trip.
Sometimes, I want something I can pretend is healthy, like a cheese stick, grapes, or hard boiled eggs. Or salami and cheese bites.
Fast food preferences are Wendy’s for me, Taco Bell for him. If we are in the correct area, I will insist on stopping at Wawa and he will insist on stopping at Krystal’s. We also both love Sonic, particularly for breakfast. It is somewhat helpful that our most common road trip is 11-12 hours, so probably two fast food stops (breakfast and lunch) plus one or two gas station stops to make sure there are plenty of snacks. We are more likely to stop at Wawa or Wendy’s for dinner on the way home than on the way to our destination.
And now I desperately want Road Trip snacks. Thankfully, we have a shorter trip planned for this weekend so I think we can justify a few road trip snacks!
While I DO like sweets (and rarely eat them – although I did have a handful of Skittles today to ward of some stress…sadly, it didn’t work) but I find on road trips, I veer more toward salty. Funyuns and corn nuts come to mind. Although, The Husband complains LOUDLY about the smell (what smell?) of both – so those are generally reserved for trips that he isn’t involved in. Otherwise, it’s peanuts, almonds, etc. Or whatever I happen to feel like when we stop for gas.
I do love Skinnypop (homemade is my preference, of course) but only the plain. We tried the butter flavor and it tasted a little…off to both of us.
I love Nacho Cheese doritos, Crunchy Cheetos, and Tim’s Cascade chips. Anything super crunchy or cheesy is my downfall. Like your mom I also adore Chex Mix. Mixed nuts are a great snack too. There were some delicious chewy oatmeal bars that I bought for my trip to New York. There was a dark chocolate one that was particularly tasty.
Oh, chips. My downfall. I don’t much of a sweet tooth (just for ice-cream), but salty snacks, especially chips are dangerous. I LOVE the Dorito Salsa Verde – my favorite. I don’t know most people love them that much though… so I am glad to hear you do 🙂