Road Food

You know you have crossed the mason-dixon line when your breakfast sandwich has 3 + varieties of meat.

We drove across the country. We got thru the mid-Atlantic states fast and then just swung thru Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and so on on 40 until Arizona when we detoured thru Sedona, Jerome and what is called the Arizona outback. It took us 8 days, which is longer than we needed to take, but at the end we decided to stretch it out a bit and spend an extra night in the California desert near Joshua Tree. We pulled into LA. . . Malibu actually. . . evacuated the van and put our toes directly into the Pacific.

Foodwise the trip wasn't amazing. We had terrible food and we had a great burger. The thing that impressed me most was the gigantic calorie haul you get eating on the road. If one was to eat at Denny's for breakfast, Waffle House for Lunch and Red Lobster for dinner, you could have a 5000 calorie day without even trying.

Mainly we ate snacks out of the cooler. Scads of PB&J, pesto, sundried tomato and either goat or cream cheese on triscuts. String cheese, apples, lollipops, beef jerky and around Oklahoma I started buying chips. Many, many variety of chips. Much of which now makes up 50% of the van carpeting.

I'll flip this photo once I can get to a broadband connection

My daughter wins the prize for most creative new thing made on the trip with her Breakfast Cocktail. She named it herself. It was no doubt inspired by the breakfast buffets at hotels and the variety of breakfast stuff she came across. It was also facilitated by the fact that I had simply given up on getting her to listen to me when I said 'no' that morning.

Lola enjoying her delicious breakfast cocktail

Breakfast Cocktail
plastic cup
fruit loops
pineapple
apple
grapes
cranberry juice

mix together in a plastic cup and enjoy. Go crazy with substitutions depending on what is available.

The Best
Bouse, Arizona Country Kitchen EAT HERE or something like that. You can't miss it.
They serve a burger called a Dagwood that has bacon, ham, sweet onion, lettuce, tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms, cheese and other stuff that I am sure I'm forgetting. Patty melt was amazing too. Great home cut never frozen french fries. Avoid the apple juice here unless you want a good cheap buzz.

The Worst
Hands down was Our House too in Van Buren Arkansas. Puke. Terrible. Nothing we ordered was good and when I say that I mean it had all gone bad. Turned. Was past its prime. Was rotten. It ruined the rest of our day.

Honorable mention
Waffle House. Yum. I wish there was one in a blue state.

For more photos from the trip click on the flikr badge on the left of this page.