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We are back in Wyoming after our surprise trip down to Oklahoma.  The children and I were down there for a week and then my husband came down along with my sister and her family.  We all drove home on Saturday choosing to drive ‘straight-thru’ arriving home around 4AM on Sunday.

This 10 day trip to my parents house came so quickly after our 2 week family road trip that it seems we’ve not been home much. In fact, since the first of June we’ve been away from home more than we have been at home! And the children and I are leaving again this Friday.

I’ve mentioned several times that for the past almost 3 years I’ve been working on a special project for my work.  I am a bookkeeper for a company in Oregon and the special project has been a certification program.  As part of the the certification we’ve had several audits.  I’ve been able to do these audits while in Wyoming thanks to technology. But for the final registration audit I’m going to be on-site in Oregon.  So we take off (again) this Friday.  My company would have flown me back but since my girls (Kiki and Lulu) wanted to visit their dad we’re driving back.  They’ll stay with their dad for the time and Christopher will go to the shop with me.  I’ve worked for this company for over 5 years but have not been back to the shop since Christopher was born. The owners have been excited to meet him and encouraged me to bring him along, even arranging for a sitter while I’m in the middle of the audit.

We’ll leave on Friday and drive part-way that day finishing our drive on Saturday. Saturday night we’ll be staying outside of Portland and visiting with my daughter Sierra. Sierra moved back to Portland on January 1 of this year.  She graduated from college last summer and lived with us for awhile before deciding that Wyoming was much too cold for her. I am super excited to see her! It has only been 6 months since she left but feels much longer.

Sunday afternoon Kiki and Lulu will meet up with their dad. Christopher and I are spending the night at the beach (in a hotel) and then Monday we’ll go to the office.  I need to be on-site for the entire week.  I’m not 100% sure where we are staying for the week. There is an unfurnished apartment above the office which we may stay in. Or we might stay with one of the owners. Or alternate at the two owners homes and add in the apartment.  Just in case, we’ll take our sleeping bags and blow up mattress for the apartment.

Now that I’ve shared the plan for this trip, let’s talk about food. After all, this is a food blog not a travel blog. 🙂

When we went on our 2 week+ road trip, we’d spent a considerable amount of time planning our food and how we could best continue our real food eating while on the road.  While we didn’t make our goal of 85% real food (the way we try to eat at home) we were still pleased with our final results. Taking along and maintaining ferments and cultures was a huge help to keeping our ‘systems’ regular.  I love kefir and kraut!

The trip down to my parents house was completely unexpected and unplanned.  The food we ate for the drive to OK (we left on a Tuesday, stayed overnight in a hotel and arrived on Wednesday) was not great.  I’d cooked a roast the day before and we took half of that (leaving the rest for Joe to eat), we took tortillas, cheese and a few other things that were easy to grab and go.  I attempted to make yogurt in the car on the road (it turned out okay but not great) and took along dairy kefir grains.  With these things we added in things like granola bars on the road.  We had dinner in our hotel room (there was a restaurant on-site) that consisted of nachos and hot wings. Not a great choice.  Once we got to my parents house the food was much easier. I had loaded up a cooler with meats from the freezer and milk plus shopped for what we wanted (there is a small ‘health food’ store in town that had frozen meats and a small selection of organic or no-spray produce) and I did the bulk of the cooking.

While I have had some time to plan for this ‘work trip’ I haven’t spent anytime in actual planning until yesterday.  And that planning didn’t go much further than realizing that I needed to get a plan together!

Meal planning for the trip is on my list of things to do today. I intend to prepare food for Friday and most of Saturday. We’ll be going out for dinner Saturday night with Sierra. The hotel we are staying at offers a full cooked to order breakfast that we’ll have on Sunday morning.  I’ll take food for a picnic lunch on Sunday (I think we are going to visit Multnomah Falls on Sunday and do some of the easy hikes around there) and I’ll take food for an easy supper for Christopher and me that night. My coolers are sure getting a work out this summer!   Just in case, I’ll take along my rice cooker to use for cooking if we stay in the apartment.  I can make a lot of great things in the rice cooker and restocking at the grocery store will be easy. I will be working full time during this week in addition to being on the road so I’m not sure how that will impact things.  I’m hoping I’ll be organized enough that I can even prepare a few things for the trip home.  We’ll see.