Roadtrip across the USA - Staying Vegan

Roadtrip across the USA - Staying Vegan

Lake Tahoe, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, Arches National Park, and Niagara Falls

Last week I got back from my American holiday which involved driving from my Mother's house in Nevada to my Father's house in Rhode Island.  My mom had a truck which she didn't need/want anymore out West, and our family farm in RI was short a work truck for lugging tractors, trees, etc.  It seemed like the perfect idea - a great way to finally get to see the rest of the country, and provide a truck for the farm without the hassle of buying and selling on either end.  That was before I had seen the boat truck we were going to drive.

The car was absolutely massive.  My French friend who came along for the ride was shorter than the bed at the back, and my 6"3' brother was shorter than the body of the passenger area.  I had been told it was big, but after living in Europe for 7 years, my ideas of scale were definitely several feet off the mark in all directions.  The amount of gas it used was better than hoped, but still pretty painful for me...the 10+ hour driving time per day was painful in a different way.  

Still, we got to see some amazing places, and managed to hit most of the National Parks on our route - Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, Inyo, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, Arches, the Rocky Mountains, Canada (my first time actually spending any amount of time there), Niagara Falls, and Lake Ontario.  I'm writing a post about some of the cool plants and communities I saw on the road for the Edinburgh Plant Science blog, so I will link to that when its up and running, if you are interested in Joshua Trees at all!

We also managed to finish the trip without ruining our friendships, which I count as a pretty major victory.  

What I wanted to post about here, though, was the difficulties and successes of staying vegan when on the road for 8 days.  I didn't do too badly, I don't think, but there was certainly room for improvement.  Most days I wasn't sure if what I was eating was 100% vegan, but this was mostly down to margarine and cooking oils.  We did bring a cooler and several bags of snacks, which was super helpful, but we also ate in diners and small family restaurants en route quite a bit, where people were bewildered enough by my requests for meals without meat, let alone asking if the bread/pasta/margarine was vegan.   

I ended up just assuming if something was usually vegan, it was probably vegan in this restaurant, and going with it for the sake of my sanity (and the sanity of my brother and friend, who had to put up with me reading every ingredient list on every item we bought in every grocery store).  

Here are a few notable exceptions, for anyone who is planning trips to these areas...

1. Sprouts Cafe; Lake Tahoe, Nevada



1. This is a great little place which does meaty, vegan, and gluten free food.  I had a really nice tempeh burger, with all the trimmings, and even got a vegan peanut butter cookie for dessert!      
2. Moab Coffee Roasters; Moab, Utah

1. We found this completely by accident, when we were looking for coffee before setting off to see the Arches.  The coffee was the best I had the whole trip, and they have non-dairy milk options - Almond, Coconut, or Soy.                                                                                         
3. Reds' Old Fashioned Candies; Virginia City, Nevada



1. I was super excited to see vegan ice cream being offered here.  No choices, of course, but that was fine for me - cherry and chocolate chip is one of my favourite combos anyway.                   
4. Mars Cafe; Des Moines, Iowa



1. We spent a night here with a friend, who directed us to this cafe down the road from her apartment.  Plenty of vegan milk options (I went for coconut this time) and some vegan bagels as well.

One thing I noticed pretty quickly, though, was the lack of protein in my diet on the trip.  Mostly I was reduced to eating pasta with tomato sauce, or a sandwich filled with peppers and cucumber.  I packed houmous and peanut butter, of course, but they got pretty tiring after a few days (despite being two of my favourite foods).  So, next time I would definitely stock up on more protein options...protein bars I had, but who wants to eat them every day?  Some seeds to add to salads/sandwiches could have been useful, along with some lentil pate, or even pre-packaged veggie burgers, etc.  To be honest, I had expected that we would be stopping at Trader Joe's and places like that along the way, which we did do once, but because of the tight schedule, we mostly did our grocery shopping next to the campsites. 

So, what I did right:

1. Packed lots of vegan snacks (and cookies - seriously, you will be jealous of everyone else's dessert if you don't have cookies) 
2. Downloaded several very useful apps, which let me know if there were vegan friendly restaurants nearby/which chain restaurants had vegan choices and what they were 
1. Vegman - I already had this app, since it has lots of European places on it, but I definitely recommend it, as its free!
2. Happycow - This pulled up a few excellent places on the way, including Sprout's Cafe.
3. VeganXpress - This was super handy for helping me decide what to order in chains, without having to ask the servers countless questions.
3. Prepared myself for shopping in mainstream supermarkets, by looking at PETA's accidentally vegan list

What I would do in the future:

1. Pack more protein! 
2. Plan grocery trips into the roadtrip schedule.  I'm sure we passed by towns with Trader Joe's and Wholefoods - in fact I know we did, but we didn't have time allocated to shopping during the day, so we couldn't stop.  Half an hour of grocery shopping time on the road every couple of days could have been very useful!
3. Snacking during the day.  Because I was doing half of the driving, and half of the navigating, I was in the front seat most days, while the snacks were in the back.  Not a big deal to reach over, of course, but enough of a barrier to stop me from snacking idly.  Since my roadtrip partners were eating plenty of meat, and I was getting next to no protein (and smaller portions - see my photos of breakfast in Pahrump, Nevada, below), I wound up being hungry several hours before they did.  Let's just say that this is not a good recipe for keeping your spirits up.

What I managed to eat in totally random, not at all vegan-oriented places:

Pahrump Casino, Nevada - apparently the only place in town that did breakfast...I managed to convince the server to give me some onions and peppers without the omelet, but I think she worried about my sanity.  Notice the difference between my breakfast and the omnivorous ones.  Definitely worth remembering to order a lot of food!

A Mexican family restaurant on the road in California...I can't seem to find anything to indicate where this was, unfortunately!  I know this is what we had for dinner on the first night, before heading into Death Valley, but I don't remember the name of the little tiny town.  Some protein - hooray!

 Noodles and Co and Coldstone Creamery - apart from Panera Bread, I think these were the only chains we ate at the whole time.  Noodles and Co had a separate menu just for vegans, which was very helpful!