I go on road-trips to do landscape photography when taking a break from doing wedding and portrait photography. My learning curve for how to eat better went at a truly glacial pace. For a long time I would eat canned food. Or I would measure the length of a drive by how many times I stopped at McDonald’s for Big Macs. A combo Big Mac meal contains 1,1200 calories! Let me tell you, if you eat Big Macs on a long drive you will arrive at your destination feeling horrible. It’s this weird sick-to-the-stomach-headache-lethargic-waxy feeling. Since seeing the film Supersize Me I haven’t been to McDonalds since.

Once a person stops with the McDonald’s, what’s a person to do? For on the road not stopping eating I highly recommend Denny’s or Shari’s. I like Shari’s better, but they aren’t anyplace. Black Bear Diner works too. Or, perhaps better, go to a supermarket deli and have them make you a sandwich or rice bowl. They always have potato salad, which is always good. You can stay moving quickly and not feel sick when you arrive.

I have five classes of road-trip camping and how I eat goes hand-in-hand with the style of camping. The lead photo was my dinner on the side of Highway 44 on the way to Lassen National Park. It was my first day of driving, so I packed the Yeti with some delicious food: a big T-bone and asparagus. It’s cooking on the Gentleman’s Hardware portable BBQ. I love that thing. It folds down into a smallish suitcase. I’ve discovered it cooks best with mesquite coals. The one slight downside is a person needs to be careful about how hot the grill cooks. It will burn the crap out of your food if you aren’t careful. Practice at home before taking it out. I love using it at home to char the outside of a steak and then throw some garlic butter on the top and finish in the oven at 400 degrees. The steak tastes as least as good as any you spend $75 on in a restaurant.

Staying in the car on the side of a road is what I call Class II Camping. If it’s the first day out, treat yourself to something nice. Later on you might be in a rush or tired and not feeling like stopping and eating. I’ve also discovered when Class II camping to find your spot before it gets dark. You’ll find way better spots and be way less stressed. Here’s an example from Central Eastern California near where Highway 58 meets Highway 14. I started looking early and found a killer campsite for the night with near zero percent probability of getting hassled.

Trader Joe’s sells some of the best road-trip food you can find. They have the Indian food in a pouch you only need to heat up. They also have the (I think) delicious chicken asada in the ready to heat container. The thought of their green enchiladas makes me hungry. Just throw them in the skillet and heat up. They won’t look like enchiladas when you’re done, but you’ll be happy about the mush you get to eat. Any of these things are a hundred times better than McDonald’s. All it takes is planning your food and your campsite early.

This picture of where I spent a night doesn’t show the spectacular chicken asada dinner or the eggs and back breakfast with fresh Peet’s coffee to get the day going.

Besides the fun suitcase grill in the lead photo there’s a couple other items I want to mention. The first is the indispensable Yeti cooler. I bought that many years ago when Yeti was first getting going. It’s not very big, but it works better than any cooler I’ve ever used. It kept food cold in Death Valley for a week on one of its first trips. All I had to do was buy a new bag of ice every day. The new battery powered coolers seem nice, but they cost a fortune. The one big-giant advantage is you could go to a place like Escalante, leave some nice food in the cooler, go backpacking for a few days, and then return to a cooler full of great food, milk, half and half, whatever.

The second items are the no-leak water jug and the Zarges box. I learned the hard way about the water on a trip to Capitol Reef. Having a jug big enough to keep you going and your dishes tidy for a few days is invaluable. Tons of places are selling these now. I recommend keeping it simple. The Zarges box started out as a lockable storage unit for my camera gear when I was a newspaper photographer. I had to downsize to a Toyota Matrix and leaving my stuff laying around didn’t work. Searching for the right box took awhile because Zarges doesn’t do very well advertising themselves. I love my Zarges Box. I origianally bolted it into the Matrix. Then it was bolted into the Tacoma. The hole in the floor ended up being a major hassle of unintended consequences. They leaked water in and everything got soggy and rusty. Took me forever to clean. Moral of the story: don’t drill holes into the bottom of your Zarges Box. Now I use it for cooking, eating, and toilet gear when road-tripping and all my gear for going to a Tucson triathlon camp in March every year. I want more.

The nice chair is just an added bonus because the back of the Tacoma was so roomy.

So plan ahead. Know what the trip will be before you go. Get proper low stress sleep. Wake up early and stay up late doing pictures.

So here’s some not great news: Since doing the SF Escape from Alcatraz triathlon with the 8 mile run followed immediately with the backpacking in Escalante followed immediately with the tiny twist of my knee in the market at Zion NP that popped something. Then the two years of limping around with it sometimes feeling ok but slowly getting worse. I finally talked Mary into letting me see a doctor. Luckily Mary knows the good knee doctor AND she was able to get me in to see him on a busy schedule. They did an x-ray. It showed part of my bone in the femur at the knee dying. Prognosis: I might need a partial or full knee replacement. Have to get a CAT scan to be sure. Plus, even worse, no big walking until it gets fixed. One good thing he said was biking and swimming are the best things to do. My thought: that’s my race, so all good there. But no backpacking and going on walks to do pictures might kill me.

At first I was sad. But after a day of thinking about it my feeling is: let’s get it done quickly so I can get back to road-tripping, hiking, backpacking, and doing pictures. All the things I love second most after my family.