Snacks to Take on a Long Drive

We always took a cooler with lots of fruit and veggies (like apples, banannas, carrot/celery sticks, grapes)... Just don't eat too many grapes! We also took pretzels and sandwiches cut up in 1/4 triangles, and dry cereal. I usually just buy trail mix, or sunflower seeds and other types of nuts.

Have fun! Salt Lake is beautiful this time of year!

Try goldfish, cheese and crackers, cereal like cheerios, pretzels. Having a cooler will help keep any drinks cool and you can do things like carrot stickt and dip, too.

Hi J.! We took a long road trip last summer when my son was 2. One of the best snacks are goldfish! They are not sticky, kids love them, and they are so cheap! We also had crackers, cereal, and we would stop and get fruit whenever we could. We took A LOT of books to entertain him. We did stop quite a bit, but it was worth it! We had an awesome time!!
HAVE FUN!

Hi J.,

We used to take lots of long car trips when I was kid, so we had lots of snacks. My mom would make beef jerky, which was very good (and not like the "sticks" you see in the stores at all!) - I could try to get the recipe from her, if you're interested.

We also took along trail mixes that included things like sunflower seeds (shelled, of course), various nuts, raisins (both the regular dark and the white raisins) and granola. There wasn't really a recipe for those, we would just throw in what we had in quantities that "looked right", iykwim.

We also took along dried fruit bits (other than raisins, things like apple rings and apricots), which aren't too sticky, but can be after a while sometimes... they aren't sticky like candy, but after a while you'll need to pass out the wet-wipes. You can also get dried fruit "chips" that aren't sticky at all - I've had banana chips and apple chips.

Something we've started using lately in our trail mixes is the dried cranberries - you'll find them with the raisins and they're called Craisins - very tasty! and a nice change to raisins.

Another thing that I learned from my mom is to pack large flour tortillas instead of just bread because you can wrap up lunch meats and other things for a neater "sandwich" to eat in the car. She would do things like bring a can of asperagus, american cheese slices and ham and then lay out the ham, cheese and a spear of asperagus on the tortilla and then roll it all up. It was very yummy and pretty neat, too. (Of course, it helps to like asperagus... my husband hates it so we don't make those very much.)

I'm at work right now, but if I can think of anything else, I'll edit my post.

Have fun!

P.

PS. Both my dad and uncle were USAF!

Go to Kraftfoods.com and click on exp for kids. They have a lot of snack ideas in there and I saw a few trail mix type recipes when I was going through them the other day. Then of course things like apples, bannanas, fruit snacks, grapes, crackers/animal crackers, raisins/yorgurt covered rasins etc etc are always good and not so messy. Do you have a portable laptop or DVD player? That will provide some entertainment as well! Have fun!

First and foremost---yeah USAF..I'm a military brat also..dad and all the boys are/were in USAF--two boys are currently captains at Lackland in San Antonio!!

As everybody mentioned--dried fruits and cereals..My two year old loves the dried cranberries and dried blueberries(Walmart has the store brands for about $1.50 but the blueberries are around $3.) They also have dried cherries..I would usually mix the berries with goldfish--salty sweet like trail mix.

Also try getting the bite size whole grain shredded wheat(strawberrie and cinnamon sugar are the best.)

Wheat thins have whole grain crackers that are yummy too and also great to mix with the dried fruit. Make sure you get the whole wheat kind(first ingrediant should read made with whole wheat flour not enriched bleached flour.)
Goodluck and have fun!!

B B

We just went on a trip with our two kids over Easter. We took a cooler, so some of our snacks were cooled. I put grapes and apples in baggies which went over well. I did the same with Goldfish and a variety of their favorite crackers/snacks. Do NOT do the YoGo's though, they get dropped too easily!!!

One of the best things I did was buy some of the "kid" water bottles (I think it's by Ozarka). They have great spouts that don't leak easily and are a great size for kids. My kids loved them, which kept them from drinking too much soda or juice on the trip.

Good luck!!