Road Trip Tips - Save Money on Food

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we are planning on a cross country (half) road trip later this year to visit my mom and then move her back here where we live. As I have our planning tips on my brain, I wanted to share those with ya'll in a series of Road Trip Tips posts.

Food on the road is easy and hard at the same time to me. On one hand, you continuously pass fast food restaurants while going down the highway. On the other hand, you don't have endless money and sometimes they are hard to get into if you have a U-haul truck or trailer. You can use up a substantial amount of time by driving around trying to find the right place to eat that everyone in your family likes and that you can get in and out of relatively easily. Not to mention it gets expensive quick! Don't forget my family is 4 children and two adults. Two of those children eat as much as an adult and one has a bottomless pit for a stomach! Here are some things we have tried on the road to make food easier and cheaper.

Buy a healthy mix of snacks at the grocery store the week before you leave to bring with you in the car. We put a container between the two kids in the back row of our mini van and filled it to the brim with yummy snacks. We brought things like dried fruit, healthy grains, nuts, peanut butter crackers, etc. This way our kids were still getting good nutrition and not being cranky because they were hungry. This allowed us to be more flexible about when we stopped for meals. As well as saved us a lot because snacks on the road (gas stations & fast food) are expensive! One night, we were behind on how far down the road we needed to be and actually opted to just munch on those snacks for dinner. We also let our kids have all the snacks they wanted whenever they were hungry on the trip if it wasn't almost a meal time. Of course, we also included a few junkier snacks and made sure everyone had a few snacks they liked. That help keep spirits up and kept us from wanting to splurge on chips at the gas stations.

Road Trip Tips - Planning Apps

We are planing to drive across the country to see my mom and help her move back with us later this year. The last time we went was last fall. We will be driving from Texas to North Carolina and back again. On the way there we will be driving for two days and sleeping at a hotel for one night. On the way back, we could potentially be driving for up to 4 days and spend up to 3 nights in a hotel. Did I mention we will also be driving our minivan back to Texas as well as a Uhaul truck pulling a car behind it. So we will be relying heavily on anything that makes this trip easier. Here are some of the apps (and a website) we have used to plan our trips across the country. 

First things first, fuel is a big one. It will be expensive no matter what, but one thing that helps us a lot is AAA gas cost calculator. We will use that to help us set aside enough money to afford gas, although unfortunately we know prices will go up before our trip. It's definitely more helpful closer to your trip. We do our best to stop at Sam's clubs along our route to cut gas costs where we can. When we can't, we try to stop at a Pilot or other large truck stop as gas is usually a little cheaper there. Gas Buddy is also useful if you need to get gas somewhere other than the big stations. It will help you find the cheaper option in whatever area you are in. I just found out that they have a gas trip calculator too so check that out. We've never used it but I'm sure it's very helpful as well.