Road Trip Meal Plan

We have taken so many family road trips. Thus results in us becoming quite the road trip meal plan experts over the years.

We try very hard not to eat out while we are traveling from point A to point B. This not only saves us money but time as well. Trying to get all 5 of us to agree on one place to eat is SO.HARD!

We have traveled from Missouri to Colorado so many times. This trip is about 800 miles and we do this in one day! Y’all that’s far with kids! Like borderline insane. But we make it and we have a good time along the way. Most of the time. 😉

800 miles, per the ol’ google maps, is about 11 hours and 45 minutes. This will take us about 14-15 hours. So we leave at about 5am and get to our destination at about 8pm.

3 main reasons we make the trip in one day.

• Reason 1 David is the type of person that doesn’t like to stop…at ALL. He just wants to “get there”, wherever “there” is.
• Reason 2 is we are a family of 5. This means that we need a hotel room that has 2 queen beds and a pull out couch. This type of room is hard to find AND is NOT cheap.
• Reason 3 is we are bringing our dog with us more often. She is a German Shepherd. She’s a small Shepherd, 65 pounds, but that is considered a large dog and there are not many hotels that will allow her size.

So we travel as fast as we can from point A to point B. This results in us road trip meal planning!

What we pack our food in

We bring our Rtic cooler and a tote for our food.

Our Rtic cooler stays cold for a very long time. We’ve had it for a couple years now and it’s held up through the super hot heat in the bed of the truck and to the super cold weather in the bed of the truck. It’s a great cooler.

We use a tote for our dry goods, even the bread. Unless it’s super hot then the bread will either go in the cab of the truck or the cooler.

Make a meal plan that works for your family

The below meal plan that I made, may not work for you. You may not have a camp stove to make hotdogs on or you may not want to cook a meal on your road trip. You might want to just “get there” and eat in the car.

Think about what you and the kids eat on a daily basis. What do they have for breakfast? What do you grab on the way out the door in the morning?

For the kids lunch, what do you pack them for lunch at school? Or if they buy lunch at school, what do they eat on a field trip day?

Dinner might be a little tricky to plan and pack. Or you could eat out. We are not big on eating out. But if this would be easier for you, then do that.

Road trip meal plan ideas

If you bring a camp stove to cook your meals on, then the ideas are endless. But if you are thinking that packing a camp stove and a bottle of propane is too much work, or you already have WAY too much in the car already, then packing cold meals in the cooler might be easier for you.

Cold meal ideas

• Yogurt parfait
• Bagel and cream cheese
• Overnight oats
• Wraps (chicken, lunch meat, hummus, caesar, gyros)
• Sandwiches (lunch meat, pb&j, tuna, chicken salad)
• Pasta salad
• Mason jar salad
• Snack lunch with raw fruits and veggies (Charcuterie board type meal)
• Cold fried chicken
• Cold rotisserie chicken
• Chicken/Tuna pouches and crackers

Hot meals to make on the campstove

• Eggs and sausage
• Smoked sausage and flavored rice
• Stir fry and rice
• Any one pot meal really
• Soups
• Hotdogs
• Hamburgers
• Brats

We bring our campstove with us on road trips and day trips. We enjoy going off road in our jeep as often as possible. The kids don’t like cold meals that much and we live in Colorado where it’s cold half the year. A warm meal is always better when it’s 30 degrees outside

Sample road trip meal plan

• Breakfast- Boiled eggs, carrot cake muffins, granola bars
• Lunch- Snack lunch. Which is turkey roll-ups, salami and crackers, buffalo chicken and crackers, cheese cubes, gogo-squeeze, chips
• Dinner- Hotdogs and chips
• Snacks- Everything haha. Shredded wheat cereal, Teddy Grahams, Goldfish, Granola bars, oranges, cookies, and candy (of course)

What I make ahead of time

I try not to make too much ahead of time, but I usually make too much.

• Breakfast- I usually make some kind of muffin for our road trip and boiled eggs. The kids are happy with muffins and I need protein in the morning along with a carb. So this is perfect for us.
• Lunch- Buffalo chicken is lunch for the grown-ups. I cook boneless skinless chicken breast and then shred it. Then I add hot sauce and put it in a container. We eat that on crackers.
• Dinner- This can be as simple as washing, cutting lettuce and tomatoes for sandwiches or actually bringing the camp stove and cooking dinner. Which is what we prefer.
• Snacks- I always make cookies. At least 2 batches so we can have cookies at our destination as well.

How much time and money does this saves us

We are a family of 5. The cost of a fast food meal is at least $50. If we ate out for all 3 meals that would be $150. If I spent $50 at the grocery store for our whole road trip meal plan then we would save at least $100.

Time, well… we still have to stop and eat whether we go through the drive through or we eat at the rest stop. BUT… we all have to agree on a place to eat. Or we have to choose between the places that are at that exit. That option NEVER goes well for us. So we bring our meals.

Where do we stop to eat?

We don’t eat our meals in the car very often. It is less messy if we stop somewhere and eat at a table of some sort. We try and find rest stops that have a park area. That way we can eat at the picnic benches. Another place that we like to stop to eat is at a playground close to the highway. They usually have picnic benches. And the last resort is the bed of the truck at the gas station. We’ve had to do that many times. We just pull around back, away from all the traffic, and eat really quick.

How do we meal plan on the way home

We always stay at a place with at least a stove, fridge and microwave. I may not always have an oven to make muffins or cookies but I can boil eggs.

We will then have granola bars and cereal for breakfast. Lunch and dinner would be either sandwiches or eating out. And snacks would all be store bought ahead of time before we hit the road again.

At lunch time, if we stop at an exit that we can all agree on food, then we’ll eat fast food. Which, in short, if there is a Panera or Chic-fil-a, then we’ll eat out. If we eat out for lunch then we’ll have sandwiches and chips for dinner.

Wrapping up our road trip meal plan

Hopefully the list of meal ideas helped get your creative juices flowing for your next road trip. Road trips are supposed to be fun. Pack fun food for your family. Or have those certain snacks that you only bring out when you are on a road trip.

The most important part of a road trip is to get there safely and to have fun. I hope this helped take some stress off your plate.

What is that one thing that you must bring on your road trip?