Ever notice how food, just like a song, can call to mind a particular memory or place? The thought process goes like this: “The first time I ever ate (fill in the first blank with a foodstuff), I was at (fill in the second blank with a restaurant or picnic location or friend’s apartment.)
The 50 Campfires’ Road Trip Food Challenge ups that game … and hopes the food doesn’t come back up, too. Here’s the challenge. Nick or Clint walks into a roadside convenience store, an on-the-way farmer’s market, or an out-of-the-way grocery and selects a regional road food that neither of them have tried before. The “delicacy” is supposed to cost two American dollars or less, but sometimes that has to get stretched when they find something “really good.”
The food item goes into the cooler (or cures under the car seat) until they come to a memorable piece of roadside memorabilia such as a pink elephant statue, a headless dinosaur, or a cement shark eating a scantily clad mannequin. They stop, break out the road food, and partake. Careful consideration and highly-honed taste buds join forces allowing them to rate the bite … and the site.
After all, 50 Campfires’ Field Trips are all about collecting unique experiences, and how many people can honestly say, “The first time I ever ate spicy Vienna Sausages, I was sitting in the palm of a giant cement gorilla in the yard of an abandoned house!”?
Clint can.
OR …
How many people can make the oath: “The first time I ever ate pickled pork sausage cured in one of those giant, reach-in-and-help-yourself jars sitting on the gas station counter, I was standing among spilled cement Easter eggs in the shadow of a T-Rex statue dressed as the Easter Bunny.
Nick can. (The statue was dressed as the Easter bunny, not Nick!)
