Southern Fried Road Trip (Part 1)

Recently, The Hubby and I took a few days off to drive my grandmother's car down to Florida for her.  Instead of just heading straight on down the highway we decided to make our trip a little more interesting by creating our very own "Feasting on Asphalt" episode (sadly, minus Alton Brown).  Our goal for this trip was simple: eat/experience as much soul food and BBQ as we could possibly fit down our gullets in four days.

Since all great road trips must begin with coffee, we filled up at Dark Horse and were off to the border.

Finding a little mom and pop restaurant is not the easiest task while you're motoring on down the highway, trying to get as far south as you possibly can in one day.  As lunch time came and went, we found ourselves aimlessly driving around Princeton, PA in search of a little family owned restaurant.  Our hunger finally won out to stubbornness and we started off our trip with a chain.  Stop number one: Steak N' Shake, where happy hour means 1/2 price milk shakes.  How could we have possibly passed that up?  Steak burgers and GIANT $1.50 milkshakes were really the perfect way to kick off our trip.

Overly full and jacked up on grease and milkshakes we buckled up and hit the road again.  I hope you'll forgive me sparing you the details of our sing alongs and games of eye spy.  I'm guessing, if you're reading this you're here for the food....

As dinner time began to roll around we were determined to stumble upon something worthy of a story.  When all the eye could see were Subway's, McDonald's, and Cracker Barrel's the theme of our drive quickly became: 'Just one more exit'.  Seeing as we happened to be in the middle of the mountains and exits were becoming few and far between, we sadly succumbed to a Subway sign and pulled off the road.  Now this is where the trip really began to get exciting for me.  As we turned off the hiway we saw a beacon of light in a sea of corporate restaurants, Sam's Hot Dog Stand.  I'm not a particularly big fan of the hot dog, and as I quickly learned, American's eat their dogs boiled, not grilled, which made me even less of a fan.  But, as they say: when in Rome... eat boiled hot dogs.  The choices for toppings were simple, ketchup, mustard, relish, mayo, chili and cheese...  Already craving a vegetable or two I immediately jumped at the chili option.  Here I was envisioning my hotdog slathered in chili packed full of beans and peppers (which zac later on had a good laugh at), just to be handed a bun filled with brown, not even a cleverly hidden piece of pepper to be found.  Silly girl, what was I thinking??  Well, I skeptically dug into my dog and in all honesty, Sam's made my night.  Best Roller-Dog ever!  I even grabbed a second one for the road.

Part two is in the works, so check back soon!