- Home
- Recipes
- Special Features
- Camping
- Road Trips
Camping 
TopRoad Trips
On the Road
Summer is the perfect time to take a trip – and sometimes, the destination is less important than the time spent getting there. Make your road trips an event, with good times and great food.
Preparing for your trip
Plan ahead and you can focus on enjoying the time on the road:
- Prepare food the night before you leave: wrap sandwiches in wax paper and then place them in a plastic bag and pack up all of your snack foods, such as cut fruit or nuts in baggies. Put all food that doesn’t need refrigeration in a bag - ready to go.
- In the morning, pack your cooler with ice and place all perishable items inside. Add enough ice so that it takes up about a third of the space.
- Remember items such as spoons, garbage bags, paper towels and napkins. You may also want to bring something for wiping hands, such as wet wipes.
- For longer trips, also take along extra plastic zip-lock bags. You can fill them with ice and add them to your cooler to keep food chilled.
Work up an appetite
Before you tie into the fabulous lunch you packed, stretch your legs and enjoy the fresh air:
- Take along a Frisbee or baseball. A game of catch is a fun start to a memorable meal.
- Bring some tunes…and dance! As long as you’re not set up too close to others, don’t be afraid to turn up the music and bust a move.
- Try some yoga – if the outing just involves you and a friend, breathe, relax and stretch your way to a perfect summer day.
Stop to enjoy nature
Make some time to appreciate Mother Nature. Bring some nuts for squirrels and chipmunks. Pick some wildflowers. Take a guidebook and use it to identify the local flora. Or simply lie back under a tree and look at things from a different perspective…examine the branches, the bark on the trunk and the leaves. There is also that perennial summer favourite: cloud watching.
Eating well on the road
Who says you can’t enjoy incredible food during a road trip?
- Pack delicious choices such as sliced deli chicken, smoked fish, and prosciutto.
- Take along fresh bread, in season local fruit (including berries) and pre-grilled vegetables. Olives are wonderful choices too.
- Pre-make creamy pasta or potato salads, and try fresh salad combinations such as watermelon, feta, mint and arugula.
- Choose interesting cheeses that you have never tried before. Sample them with condiments such as red pepper jelly and sundried tomato pesto.
- Toast decadent nuts, such as macadamia or cashews, and bring them along in plastic sandwich bags.
- Bake some homemade muffins, cookies or fudge to savour on the way.
Pack melons for the road
Melons, like watermelon and cantaloupe, are fantastic companions on the road. Slice them up in advance and place them in open freezer bags at the top of your cooler. They have high water content, so they can hydrate everyone while giving taste buds a cool summer sweetness that feels like a treat.
Melons are also really good for us. Watermelon is an excellent source of vitamin A, a natural anti-oxidant, while cantaloupe is full of potassium, which helps control blood pressure.
Road-friendly dishes
These sunny dishes are the perfect companions for your summer road trips.
Fresh Fruit Shake
Place this refreshing Fresh Fruit Shake in your cooler and sip on it during your morning rest stop. Packed with calcium, it also contains antioxidants from fresh fruit.
Ginger Sesame Seed Brownies
For a real treat, try these Ginger Sesame Seed Brownies for your mid-afternoon sweet fix.
Games to play on a road trip
It’s always wise to keep mentally active when you have to sit in a car for long periods at a time. In addition to offering moments for quiet reflection, road trips give us the chance to share some old-fashioned, retro good times.
Name that Tune
Make a playlist of about 30 well-known songs and be sure to make them as inter-generational as possible. The first one to guess the name of each song wins a point. Award an additional point if someone can guess the artist. At this point, you can either advance to the next song, or enjoy each selection in your road trip “soundtrack”. Of course, you won’t be able to participate if you created the list – so feel free to play using the radio as your music source.
20 Questions
This game truly stretches the brain! One traveller thinks of a person, place or thing, and others have only 20 questions (in total as a group) to ask to try to determine what the mystery is. The questions asked can only have “Yes” or “No” answers. If you’d like, you can give each round a different theme such as “food”, “books”, “celebrities”, “music”, etc. If no one has guessed the answer after 20 questions, the mystery item or person is revealed and another round begins.
The Picnic Game
Perfect for road trips where you’ve actually packed a picnic, this game is great for a food-loving bunch of travellers. One person starts it all off by saying, “I’m going on a picnic and I’m bringing….”, adding in whatever item they plan to take along according to a theme that only he or she knows. Others try to suggest items they could bring, and the originator lets them know whether or not they can bring the items, based on the mystery theme. The first person to guess the theme wins the round, and starts off the next “picnic”.
I Spy
This is a classic! One person in the car picks something inside or outside and everyone has to guess what it is. If it’s something outside, however, it has to be big and obvious enough that it won’t have gone flying by by the time people start guessing. The initiating person starts with “I spy with my little eye something that is...” inserting the colour or some other trait. You can also try this by giving the first letter of the object instead. The person who guesses correctly gets to start off the next round.
STAY CONNECTED
Download the My Metro app.
Grocery list, flyer, coupons and points all at your fingertips!
Follow us
for more inspiration, recipes and exclusive offers.
