Road Trips and Car Camping Can Be Easy, Delicious and Healthy July 21 2016

Summer is road trip time. Camp in the mountains and enjoy some hiking or hang out by a creek. I love car camping. It's usually associated with a rock climbing trip for me, but recently I've been getting out simply to be outside and take pause and turn all my screens off. 

I also love cooking while camping... but not all the time. Sometimes the climbing day takes a bit, I want to stay up on a hike for a perfect view of the sunset, or I just don't feel like dealing with the complications of a meal on a camp stove. 

Turns out our food is perfect for car camping. On a trip to the mountains around Buena Vista (same trip as the Pupsicle discovery!), I hiked with Henry the chihuahua up to a mountain lake. Henry, while a trooper for an 8 lb, 10 year old dog at 12,000 feet, is not the fastest. And I wasn't so fast by the time we got down. Heading straight up a pass immediately after arriving from the Front Range I was asking for alititude sickness. 

Luckily I brought our Tom Kha Gai soup and was able to heat it up in 3 minutes on my camp stove, eat something I could stomach and get hydrated to help with the altitude sickness. And it was so delicious! Perfect on a cool mountain evening.

Eating while doing any type of traveling can be tricky. Do you end up snacking on foods bought in the gas station that you wouldn't normally eat, or pulling in to less than quality fast food joints for lack of better options?

Our food is perfect for avoiding taking a hit to the quality of your diet when on the road, trail, or plane. 

One trick I use for road tripping is freezing pints of soup and our meat dishes to put in a cooler with ice packs which helps the food stay cold and last longer. 

And it seems inevitable, at least for me, to want to snack on something sweet when I'm doing a long drive or seemingly interminable airport to transfer to bus sort of travel day. This past trip the Paleo chocolate cake lasted me all trip as part of my food box (so good with peanut butter on top), and a batch of Super Almond Cookies always hits the spot. The freezing trick works for desserts, too.

This menu our Best Ever Tuna Salad is one of my favorite dishes for running errands around town and longer trips - I have successfully gotten it through security for flying. Just chuck it in a cooler pack and you're good to go.