If you were following along on Instagram, you may have noticed I took a 9 day road trip with my boyfriend in celebration of his 30th birthday. We ended up going to Lake Tahoe, rerouted from our original plan of heading to Lassen National Forest due to snow and ended up in Big Trees, CA (yes, that’s the name of the town! can you guess what we saw there?), Yosemite National Forest, and Sequoia National Forest. While I was still coaching on the road for about an hour a day, I did take a break from work the rest of the time and MAN… I’m feeling refreshed, renewed, and am coming back into the real world with a bit less anxiety. The bigger conclusion is that I need to be in nature to recharge more often.
For our trip we decided to rent a camper van through Escape Campervans (HIGHLY recommend you doing so if you’ve been considering it). It not only made sleeping more convenient and comfortable with an almost queen size bed when you folded the living room down, but it also made cooking very convenient with a built in kitchen including a refrigerator, pump sink, and propane fueled Coleman two burner stove. Quite honestly, we didn’t eat out aside from little deli snacks whenever we would stop at the grocery stores and the very last day on our way back to LA to celebrate the end of the trip. There were times where we could have had a meal out but we honestly liked cooking in the van so much that we kept doing so!
This trip is proof that with a little bit of planning you CAN keep it healthier on a road trip. I went back through my photos and compiled some of the meals I could remember to share with you as inspiration. Some of the qualities of the photos are not on par, but we’re not looking for perfection here, just suggestions! A lot of the recipes below can be recreated camping without a full kitchen like we had access to. When camping in just a tent I’d recommend bringing a little one or two burner propane powered stove. If you cannot, I could imagine some of these items could be made ahead of time or made in a way that it’s heated up over a grate over the fire.
While I do eat meat and cheeses, I usually don’t eat as much as I did this trip. Between the amount of energy we expended while hiking and camping in a lot of colder, mountainous climates I think my body naturally was asking for some heavier, higher protein and fattier foods. If you are a vegetarian or vegan, you could easily sub tofu, tempeh, beans, or whatever your favorite vegetarian protein option is. All meals are gluten-free.
Breakfast Ideas:
Grass-fed yogurt, Purely Elizabeth Granola, Almond Butter, Blueberries
Power Parfait: Grass-fed yogurt, Parsley Health Chocolate Rebuild protein powder, oatmeal, chia seeds as the base topped with Purely Elizabeth Granola and dark cherries
Hard Boiled Eggs with leftover boiled sweet potatoes and a dollop of organic Sour Cream (probiotics!)
Eggs, Sweet potato hash with onion and orange pepper — one day we mixed it with leftover veggies, fresh bacon from the butcher shop
Eggs and veggies — one morning we had eggs over A LOT of sautéed spinach, another morning it was eggs over broccoli. This is one of our favorite breakfasts non-camping too with eggs and asparagus being the winner veggie-egg combo.
On the last morning as we were cleaning out the van fridge we had yogurt, almond butter, blueberries and on the side we each at one breakfast taco with a fried egg in corn tortilla with some salsa, hot sauce, and coleslaw. Super good, actually!
Lunch Ideas:
Plant Power Cauliflower sandwich thins, Turkey, Cheese, Chosen Foods Mayo made with avocado oil, lettuce or spinach. I was worried about the Plant Power Cauliflower thins being a bit weird not heated up (they taste best when toasted), but, the taste was actually very good without the heat!
Canyon Bakehouse gluten free bread, turkey, cheese (we used Horseradish cheddar for a few and then Havarti Dill for a few), tomato, lettuce, red onion. One of the last days in an effort to clean out the fridge we each had a double decked — haha!
Heated up leftovers from the night before if we weren’t out hiking (the chicken fajita’s made a grand appearance one of the days).
Dinner Ideas:
Banza Pasta with Garlic Marinara Sauce and Homemade meatballs (grass-fed beef, oatmeal, egg, dried oregano and basil, salt and pepper)
Banza Pasta with sun-dried tomato chicken sausages and veggies (from the freezer isle)
BBQ night for the birthday dinner: chicken thighs and pulled pork tossed with Stubb’s BBQ sauce (the one with the least amount of sugar and less amount of ingredients at the store we were at), coleslaw from the deli, Pamela’s GF Mac N Cheese, frozen bag of veggies
Leftover chicken and pulled-pork, boiled sweet potatoes with grass-fed butter and a little sour cream, sautéed spinach with garlic, coleslaw from the deli
Chicken breasts cut up sautéed with peppers and onions (both veggies from the freezer isle) in corn tortillas topped with sour cream, salsa, and guacamole
Turkey burgers with garlic and a dab of BBQ sauce in the meat, mashed sweet potatoes, sautéed spinach and garlic, corn on the cob
Snack Ideas:
Veggies and hummus — Stasher bags are THE BEST for saving cut up veggies and help with the reduction of single use plastic items.
I’m a big fan of the Hope Hummus brand because all of the ingredients are ON POINT which I bought ahead of time… once we ran out of that we did what we could. I like Sabara hummus for the taste but try not to buy it too often because of the inflammatory oils.
Almond Butter with fruit — we had a lot of bananas and apples
Buddha Bowl Popcorn — a splurge and we couldn’t stop eating it!!
As a bigger indulgence since I got my moon (you know, my lady friend) during the trip was a Daiya Dairy Free Strawberry Cheesecake. Lot’s of ingredients and maybe not the cleanest option but it was worth every bite.
We definitely had quite a bit of munchy chips and such but kept it as best we could to cleaner lower inflammatory oils: EVOO, Avocado, or Coconut Oil are best. Always read labels!
Booze:
We drank a little bit on this trip, but not much. I’m personally going through a journey of taking a BIG step back from booze and it’s helped the anxiety I experience lower by… quite a lot! That being said, at the end of the day having a beer around the fire was something we did do most nights. I’ve been loving all things kombucha beers: they’re gluten free, gut friendly, and quite honestly now days even one drink gives me a slight hangover and that’s not the case with kombucha beers. Booch Craft and Kayla are my fav’s, with Flying Embers being a close third. Glutenberg and O'mission gluten free beers made an appearance, too.
Did any of these sound like something you’d recreate while camping? What are your favorite go-to camping recipes? I’d love to hear! Drop them in the comments, leave a comment on my instagram, or send me an email rachael@wholisticbelly.com and let me know.