Episode 52 | Gluten-Free Road Trip Travel in Utah

Enjoy food. Enjoy travel. Enjoy life. You’re listening to Travel Gluten Free by Elikqitie. 

This is episode 52 road trip Utah gluten free. Welcome to the travel gluten for you podcast where you my friend can listen in on how to lead a gluten free lifestyle with more fun and ease. This is a Elikqitie and I founded travel gluten free for you. Yes, you my listener. I want to be a resource contributor and support to you my gluten free friend and for our gluten free community for as little as $3 a month, become a show sponsor through patreon.com and I'll mention your name in my podcast as a sponsor along with other great thank you gifts. So if you think that travel gluten free podcasts is valuable to living your gluten free lifestyle and traveling, definitely check out patreon on the support page on travel gluten free. You can also donate through Patreon in the show notes.

In the links in the show notes below. Hey my friend, I would be giving a listener shout out for an Instagram fan, but I haven't had anybody new tag me in Instagram. So I will, we'll be giving you a traveled gluten free travel deal, which you will hear about and the link for the travel. Leo will be in the show notes below. It's summertime and your kids might be bored and you might live in Utah or somewhere else and you're thinking about road tripping. So you're looking to take a break from work. Um, you might be looking just to get out of the House for few days or week or two weeks. Road trips are such a great adventure. 

Yeah. And I am a huge fan of road trips. I just recently took a road trip with a friend, which I'm going to tell you about in a little bit and I plan to take the next two or three road trips. 

Okay. So what I really love about road trips is the flexibility and independence they give you when you're traveling. You can, if you see an interesting museum or you see an interesting store on the side of the highway or the road that you're driving on, you can stop at any time and you sometimes they sub it, produce stands, flower stands, local shops. I mean it's the old west out here in Utah. So definitely stop and visit something that is not on your hit list that you have seen and that is tickles your fancy. There's so many interesting and fun places to see when you're out in the road, especially in Utah, uh, off of one exit and I can't remember what exit is in Utah. I believe it's off of I 15 there's actually a petting zoo at a garage and a gas station. And I stopped her there all the time when I'm passing by because how can you not love sobbing at a petting zoo? And they have all these great animals. They have not just goats and sheep, but they believe they have like a Llama and they've got a couple of zebras there and I think they have a giraffes or they have some like not normal animals. You'd AC in Utah or be find at a regular petting zoo. So it's pretty great. 

Okay. Did you wrote chips? Cause you find unexpected things like that and they're just, they make your day, make your trip so much more fun and memorable when you find these undiscovered places that you didn't know about and we're not on your plan or itinerary. And um, some people might not like to do drive it across the whole country. That's fine. You can make it a short road trip. If you live in Utah, Ellie, go down to southern Utah or in northern Utah or you can go out of state and make roadtrips. California are really fun from Utah and so you can make your little, your road trip as small or as big as you want. If you've never done a road trip before, I would suggest just making a small three or four day road trip. And I'm definitely planning some time in between to um, give yourself a lot of time to find some undiscovered places and check out some new things along the way that you weren't planning on doing. And of course you always need to leave some time for bathroom breaks as well. So this episode is going to focus specifically on road tripping in Utah and what you want to consider, um, when you're traveling to Utah in your car on your next adventure. Um, if you're traveling in your own car or you're renting a car in Utah and you're doing a road trip, if you want to get my 10 road trips about, if you went to get 10 tips about road trips in general, definitely check out my episode 13, which is 10 tips for road trip travel. And that is if you're gluten free or not. So I have 10 tips for traveling on the road just in general. You're just like to travel. All right, so let's jump into the show. The first thing you need to do is you always end when you're traveling in Utah on the road is you always need to keep water in your car. And you might be thinking that you can stop at the gas station and buy drinks. You could, however, um, those drinks can sometimes be two to $3 for each one. And if you are a family of six and you stop three times to get a drink, that's about $36 in drinks. That's super expensive. It is much less expensive to take water with you and just put it in, um, like a plastic container or a storage, a car storage thing in the back. 

Um, what I like to do is I like to keep water and um, because it's easy and yes, it's a little bit warm. You can get one of those coolers that electric coolers that plug into your car if you want to do that to keep it cold if you only like cold water. Um, but the other reason you always want to travel with water too is if for some reason and you don't plan on this happening, you get stuck somewhere or you get lost somewhere and you are near any places where you can buy water, then you always have that water's a backup cause you tall gets very hot and very dry. It's always very dry, but it gets very hot in the summer and you don't ever want to be without water. And so when I go on road trips, um, I always have bottles of water and when I'm hiking, I always bring a hydro pack with a two liter. 

Um, camelback with camelback is just a brand of hydroponic and hydro pack is just a like plastic container that holds water with a big long straw that you can put through a backpack so you can get all different types. I like camelback. They were the first ones that come out and they're like really great quality. So he's camelbacks a lot and he uses when I'm hiking and I hang it in my car and it keep it with me the whole day. That way I always know I have plenty of water with me. So definitely keep water in your car for any type of emergency and that is my dog or, um, and also to save money when you're on a road trip. So always keep water in your car and Utah. The next thing is snacks. You always want to keep some gluten free snacks in your car on any virtue, but especially in Utah, because when you're in Utah, a lot of the guest stations and places you're going to be at are very small. 

They're in very small communities and very small communities generally do not. Now, sometimes you have an exception, but very small communities generally do not have a lot of gluten free options available. Um, even if they do have food. So you definitely want to keep going free snacks with you and remember, just make sure you don't have snacks that have like chocolate coating or any kind of coating on the outside because those coatings will melt. So keep that in mind that you don't want to have, uh, like, like candy or anything that's going to melt. 

Chocolate is definitely best bought at a store if you can find some that is safe and gluten free and definitely do not keep anything that has snacks with chocolate in your car. So, um, I like to keep things such as baked chips or, um, different kinds of bars that I can eat that don't have chocolate. And, um, and popcorn is a really good one. So just keep in mind that you want to take something that doesn't have chocolate, will not melt easily or spoil easily. Um, and that is easy to open on. One of my favorite snacks is a Veggie copia olives because they come in their own little individual containers and you can just rip open that container and eat it. So I love a little snacks like that when I'm driving, um, to keep me, um, like healthy snacks so that I have something to eat in the car while I'm driving and it'll keep me going. That doesn't have a lot of sugar. So I don't crash while I'm driving cause not crashes and crash a car but crashes and like you get tired and fall asleep. So keep that in mind as well. You don't eat a lot of sugar when you're driving because that sugar will drop you off and then you will get tired. The next thing we're talking about is when you're in virtue of being in Utah, you definitely want to keep baby wipes and rags in your car. And I'm going to tell this is the reason why. So baby wipes are super useful because you can clean your hands. Um, if sinks are not available. 

One of the things I like to do is get unscented baby wipes and put an essential oil in and then put a little water on top and then mix it up. So, um, because the scented baby waves can sometimes have fragrances in them that I don't like. So my last road trip, which I will tell you guys about, is going to be, um, it was in Moab and what I did was I had unscented baby wipes and he put some lemon essential oil in it and put a little water and shook it up. And I had London baby wipes to wipe off my hands because you use pit toilets a lot when you were road tripping in the national parks. And so there's, they do, they don't have sinks that you was soap. They just have the hand sanitizer, which is better than nothing. But I always feel like my hands are never cleaned enough, so I always wipe them down with a baby wipe. 

Another great use for baby wipes. As you can clean off tables at rest stops before you eat to make sure that the surface is clean. Um, you can also clean off any other surfaces and cleaning surfaces in your car. If things spill on yourself or your children or your car inside or outside. Sometimes there's things that's filling the outside of your car that you want to wipe off, like soda and things like that that have acid that can really ruin your paint. Um, and you also want to carry rags. And the reason why you went to carry rags are because you, anything that a baby wipe is just, you're going to use a whole bunch of them. If it's a bigger spill, you can clean up with rags. You can cool off a hot car with a rag and water. So if you have like leather seats or vinyl seats, I don't know if anybody has vinyl seats anymore anyway, you can put water on a rag and wipe down your seats and that cools it off pretty quickly. 

Okay. Um, when you are road tripping in Utah, you're going to get a lot of red rock sand, especially if you're down in southern Utah where a lot of sand or dirt on the back window of your car and baby wipes will not cut it. You'll hop these a whole bunch of them. So what I do is I get some water from water bottle that maybe um, someone didn't drink and it's like older water that I don't want some a person that drink but it's great cleaning your car and I just pour it on the back of my window and then clean it with a white, uh, uh, clean it at the gas station. Or if I'm not at a gas station, I really need to clean it. I'll just wipe it with a dry rag and wipe the sand or dirt off. Or if, if I need to also get that water bottle that nobody wants to use because it's old, it has old water in it and I'll put it on the back window and clean it off. Cause it's really hard to see out your back window with the sun being so strong in Utah and the glares, um, along with um, the sand and salt and or dirt that might be on your back window depending on the time of year you were driving through Utah. 

Yeah. So those are definitely three things. Um, you want to keep in mind water, make sure you carry water, snacks, baby wipes and rags. All right, my friend, my dog is sitting here complaining and we are going to take a short break. Poobah we come back, we're going to find out why you should travel with spray hand sanitizer and paper maps. 


All right, my next thing you definitely want to take with you on your road trip to Utah is hand sanitizer and you don't want to get the Gel and I'm going to tell you why you want to get a spray hands in his hydrate because you can use it for many more things besides just sanitizing your hands. One another thing you can use hand sanitizer for as you can use it as a air freshener. So if you go into a Porta potty or you go into a pit toilet or uh, any kind of bathroom, like when you go on the rest stop on the road, you can spray it in the air to make this the where you're going to the bathroom smell much better either before and, or after. So you can use spray hand sanitizer as a room. You can also use it to clean tables. 

You can use it as an air freshener for your car. So if everybody gets out of the gas station, you and a freshen up your car a little bit, you can spray it on a baby wipe and wipe down your seats a little bit, sprayed in the air, fresh in your car up. You can spray it and shoes, backpacks. And um, in addition to just cleaning your hands. So spray his hand sanitizer is much more useful, uh, in your car, uh, or are much more useful on a trip or just in general? I just keep spraying hand this hand sanitizers and the Gel because you can do many, many more things with it as well. Um, you can wipe down all sorts of surfaces with it, uh, in a day in addition to all of the things that we talked about before. So spray hands, hands Heizer definitely preferred over gel, especially if you're doing a car trip. 

You can just, I usually keep one in my uh, travel bag or my travel purse and then I keep one in the door of my car so I have one in each place so that they're handy no matter where I need them. Another thing you want to definitely have on your road trip, do you tell his car organizers? Um, that way it's easier to find items. You can put all your drinks and carve related items in your one car organizer. If you, um, are renting a car, that might be a little hard. I mean, you could buy a car, a car organizer at Tj Maxx or Walmart and get a really inexpensive one and just leave it or donate it somewhere. Um, and then if you're going for a long time, that would make sense. But it's really great to put all your necessities such as hair ties and, and bottled water and your car emergency kit in that car organizer and that way you know where they are and you don't have to be fumbling around in your trunk to find things. 

Another thing you definitely want to carry in Utah, no matter summer, winter or fall, but definitely the winter time and definitely the summertime, his windshield wiper fluid because when you are traveling, um, although they're not a lot of bugs in Utah, um, when you're on the highway you always get hit with lots of bugs and you will always need windshield wiper fluid to get those bugs off. And if you can't go back to my previous tip to get a baby wipe and some hand sanitizer, those are also good because it's, the hand sanitizer has alcohol in it to clean off bugs. So like the spots, if you can't get the spots off with what your, your um, windshield wipers and your car fluid and it, you're getting a lot of glare and it's hard to see. You can and you're not at a gas station, you can always get them off with hand sanitizer and baby wipes. 

So definitely try that too. Um, it's very easy to run out a windshield wiper fluid and that's one thing you don't want to run out of when you are on the road. So definitely spend the $3 and get a bottle of windshield wiper fluid and um, make sure you have a clean windshield at all times when you were road tripping in Utah. Another thing you want to carry with you and you're road tripping is sunscreen and lip balm because you may get, be getting in and out of your car lot. And I keep sunscreen, um, with me in my backpack and I usually keep one on the door. Now sunscreen will break down. Um, so keep that in mind in the heat because it gets very, very hot and you taught in the summer. Um, but uh, I'd rather have some sunscreen when I'm hiking, then forget all together. 

So I usually have it one in my backpack and one in my car and I go through pretty fast. So it doesn't stay that long in the car and it's still effective. I've haven't had a problem with it. And when you do, and you also want to have lip balm in the car and you don't have stick lip balm cause stick lip balm will melt very easily in Utah. You and to have, if you're road tripping and Utah you and have something in a tube that a does not have petroleum jelly petroleum jelly is a gasoline product and um, well is not good, especially when you're out in the sun to make sure you have a natural lip balm in a tube when you're road tripping is your lips will get really dry. Um, there's also some other things that lip balm is really great for. 

Lip Balm is just really great for any dry skin on your body. So I've been in all my elbows or um, sometimes my face, there's certain parts of my face and my skin, they get really, really dry and I'll use it on that, the back of my hands if they get really dry. Um, I've also used it for like, if you have like hair that's going crazy or out of place, you can take some lip balm and use it like kind of like hair gel and put it in your hair. It works awesome. I've done that so many times. Going to business meetings and road tripping as well. So, um, lip balm is also really good for like spot things on your hair that are going to get crazy and you need them under control. Um, they're really good to use as kind of like a substitute hair gel because it has the similar consistency and it helps to weigh down your hair. 

So keep that in mind next time you have a not so good hair that's sticking up out from nowhere and it's just you see it in your mirror and you need to fix it. Use your lip balm. Okay. The next thing you definitely want to carry with you in your car when you're road tripping and Utah's paper maps because there are many places in Utah when you don't have service, including inside the parks and lots of places in southern Utah. And there's lots of rural places in Utah where you will not have cell coverage unless you're basically on main street. So, um, you definitely need to keep that in mind that you always want to have paper maps wherever you go in Utah. And you can easily get them at visitor centers for free. They have like the Utah elevated, uh, driving map and you can usually get other Utah maps at gas stations and things like that as well. 

Um, but, uh, I would just suggest getting the free ones at information centers, but if you don't have one and you're coming into Utah, definitely stop and get one. It is definitely worth the five or $6 investment for a paper map because when you are stuck and you don't have any cell service, doesn't matter who you have. Verizon, at and t, um, singular. You, there are places where you don't get any cell service whatsoever and you do not want to be stuck in Utah and not know where you're going and, um, not have anybody to ask him because that can happen as well. So, um, keep that in mind and always carry a paper map of where you're going. And the last piece of advice I'm going to give you, because I just went on a road trip and forgot to do this, this and make sure you download songs or podcasts or audio books or whatever you want to listen to you in the car before you go on your trip. 

Because when you don't have cell service, you don't have a way to um, download or listen to anything on your phone that's not um, in your, uh, on your phone memory. So make sure you download this audio books, the podcasts you want to listen to and uh, I knew music you'd like to listen to so that when you are in those areas that you don't get cell coverage, you have something to listen to in the car. Um, when you're road tripping. Also, it's really fun to play road trip car games like guests, the animal or Isi or, um, you can just look those up on the Internet. There's so many fun ones to play with your family and, or the other person that you're with. So that's always a good thing to do too. So I'm going to tell you about my road trip. I just took with Dave Jackson. 

Dave Jackson is another podcaster I wanted to hit. He has eight or nine podcasts out and one of his more popular podcasts is asked the podcast coach. And um, he is great if you're looking into creating a podcast, definitely look up Dave Jackson podcast or you will find his information all over the Internet. And we went on a trip birch up to Moab after we went to a podcast conference, which was the Utah podcast summit, which Bobby, I can't remember his last name puts on, but it was really great. Um, and shout out to ever Gonzales at the outlier podcasts who also puts on podcasting events. Definitely gonna show up at a couple of his events as well. So, um, anyway, so we left from the podcast summit in Sandy and we went to Moab and some of the fun things we did on our chip. Um, well we went to Moab and we hit canyon lands on one day. 

Then we had arches on the next and we went to arches at night and we hung out and looked at the stars and we did car karaoke, which was so much fun and car Karaoke at night, driving through arches national park. I mean it was just a blast and Dave had never been to Utah so I got to take him to like all the things that we did were the first time he's ever done anything in Utah. So it was a lot of fun to give him that experience. And it was really great to go to Moab in June because we got really great weather. The one day was 80 degrees and canyon land and it was like 89 and next in arches. So it was a little bit of a temperature difference, but it was really nice weather. It was sunny all day. Uh, and I definitely did that break in between. 

So we went during the second day. The first day we just went all the way straight through cause there's only 80 degrees for a high, it was not very hot. But the second day we went in the morning and then took that break midafternoon which was great. And then came back, um, between, I think it was like five and midnight. Um, no, it was actually five and 10 at night. Uh, and we saw delicate arch at sunset, which I will post some pictures of on Instagram, which was really, really fun. Definitely would suggest doing a delicate arch hike at sunset. And um, it, it sounds, it was around eight 45, um, this past week and we had a great time. We definitely suggest doing Moab. I would do it again in a heartbeat. And if you are going to Moab, uh, and you'd like some advice or you'd like some information about it, you can contact me on my website, travel, gluten free, podcast.com. All right, my friends, we don't have a listeners shout out today, so I hope you're all having a wonderful day. And um, definitely. 

Okay. And in a future episode coming up shortly, I will be doing a listener Q and. A. So please give me your questions about being gluten free or rich shipping, gluten free, or traveling gluten free, and go to my website at traveled interview, podcast.com and fill out the contact form and I will answer all of your questions on a future episode of travel gluten free podcast. I hope you all are having an awesome day and have a great gluten free day.