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Comment by habosa | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I do a long highway trip I can't help but notice how often I pass "one of everything". By that I mean when I'm hungry I don't have to wonder where I will eat, I know that within 10 miles I will find some exit with a few fast food chains, a fast casual restaurant, 2 gas stations, an a motel. You don't have to ask "Where is the McDonalds" you ask "Where is the NEXT McDonalds" because you know you probably are between two.

I find this tiny bit of Americana comforting. I don't know if there is another country so large that is so consistently developed. There are so few places in America where you might end up out of range of these basic comforts, despite our fairly massive landmass.

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Are you the Don Turnbee?

Area Man Holding Out Until Next Exit For Better Fast Food Options https://local.theonion.com/area-man-holding-out-until-next-e...

Try doing that on a north to south trip from walla walla to Las Vegas. There are still places in the USA where “next services, 150 miles” is common. I love those drives.

Me too. These are the best sort of road trips, where you still need to plan things out and when you do finally stop it's a dusty service station with a local diner next door, not another McDonalds.

It definitely takes longer, but this is why I avoid interstate highways if I have the time. I also find pathfinding and turning more fun than passing.

You wouldn’t have much choice for most of the route unless you decided to detour onto I15, adding an extra hour to the trip with worse scenery.

Went through the SE corner of Oregon last weekend, camping on Steens mountain. It's amazingly and wonderfully empty, which isn't how I'd like to live, but is great to experience. Had lunch in Fields, Oregon (no, didn't get the milkshake, as I am not a milkshake guy).

I'm from North Dakota and the last time I drove through Wyoming, I learned very quickly that those signs are no lie. You, wildlife, and other cars is all you will see and not much of the later. ND felt packed compared to WY.

I hate it. You drive a thousand miles and eat at the same friggin’ restaurant you have at home!

I might not be so annoyed if I actually liked the common roadside places, but as it is, “McDonald’s next exit” is more of a threat than a promise.

The local food places are probably better, but one small problem on a big trip can be caused by food that doesn't react will with you. Whatever their faults, most franchises are at least that consistent.

And if you have young kids, McDonalds is very useful on a road trip. Food that I can at least tolerate, is a known quantity, the kids will eat it, and they have a play area (well, not all, but a lot of them). I won't eat McD's when we're in our home city, but I really appreciate it on a trip.

> I find this tiny bit of Americana comforting.

Really?

How about you drive in Italy, you still find "service" and food every 10-20 miles, but food completely changes every 40-50 miles.

There are chains, but most are mom-and-pap shops, you can call them "trattoria" or "osteria".

I grew up in Italy. As much as I like the US, on the food side there's really no comparison.

Give it a try.

I fairly regularly drive through Europe from the UK to Italy, and (along with Switzerland) Italy has the best roadside food I've ever seen in the world. Even the crappiest looking gas station has healthy and tasty food!

Equivalent places do exist in most US towns, though they're a bit further from the highway. The cuisine doesn't change as rapidly, but there are regional differences.

Sadly, quality varies considerably. People go to the big chains because they're a known quantity. A fair number of those mom-and-pop restaurants don't make from scratch. They heat up what comes off the Sysco truck or the warehouse club. The Internet makes it a bit easier to find a restaurant with real local character, though reading the reviews is kind of an art form: they'll get a lot of praise for generic, boring food and few reviewers will recognize a gem when they find it.

The US can't match the food culture in Italy, but with a bit of knowledge you can eat well here.

This has improved a lot even since the 80s. I remember road trips as a kid and the difficulty of finding vacant lodging. Now, there are groupings of multiple large hotel chains with vacancy at least every couple hours, even in relatively remote parts of the country.

Having driven across the US a number of times, I think the last product this isn’t true for is good quality coffee. There are still parts of America where you can travel several hundred miles without seeing a single standalone Starbucks.

In fairness, there probably is good coffee out there, you just don't have the mental shortcut of being able to depend on the Starbucks brand. I suppose this was the problem that Yelp, Foursquare, and friends tried to solve, but we're still not really there— even as a conscientious person who would on balance prefer to support a local, non-chain business, it's still a lot of effort to look up which one to go to.

For anyone not willing to put in that effort (or just take a risk), forget about it— that person will just stay on the highway and wait out the next Starbucks.

I'm pretty dedicated to coffee (i'd probably drive 15 minutes each way out of the way on a road trip for decent coffee), and will yelp / google aggressively if i'm the passenger.

Parent is right, there are still huge stretches with neither starbucks nor indie shops of any quality, and not just in the empty bits out west.

Maybe it's because I don't have a very high opinion of Starbucks, but there's a surprising number of those little drive-thru coffee hut things (not sure what you call them) that beat the pants off of Starbucks. Just finished up a road trip the other day that took me through the "empty bits out west" (Wyoming, Montana, Nevada), and I hit up at least 3 of them.

Problem is, if I'm low on decision making energy or risk tolerance I will prefer a near-guaranteed acceptable solution over a probably good but potentially awful one.

Love the espresso shacks! In addition to having very proper coffee, they are also great sources of local information if you need it. I am always astonished at how well-distributed and ubiquitous they are even in the very rural West. Every country road far off the beaten path with any sort of local traffic at all seems to have (at least) one. It is a neat bit of rural West culture.

I've always wondered about the economics of espresso shacks. Obviously the fixed costs are very low, a literal shack and bit of nigh worthless rural land. Each one appears to be a unique and creative local business with no underlying corporate chain tying them all together but the sheer pervasiveness of them makes me wonder if there is a well-oiled corporate business model underneath it all.

Huh, I’ve never heard of espresso shacks. They’re only on the West coast? Do you have a photo of one?

Google does: https://www.google.com/search?q=espresso+shacks&tbm=isch

Looks like there's a lot of crossover with the "bikini barista" concept, which I could picture being off-putting to some. I guess that's another plus for a national chain— your morning coffee isn't going to turn out to be something embarrassing to have to explain to the kids in the back seat.

The Pacific Northwest espresso shacks have no relationship to "bikini barista" places. Or at least, I've never seen a bikini in one anywhere. These are rural places staffed by locals for the locals, often teenagers.

The bikini ones are all over the PNW though. (As are regular ones)

I think it's really the northwest. Oregon has em, but driving from the bay area to LA I never saw one in rural parts of central california. They might exist though.

There are a couple in and around Modesto, but yeah they really start to become rare south of that (ignoring those weird bikini coffee shacks).

They originated in the rural Pacific Northwest, because coffee culture isn't just in the city there, but they've spread across the northern half of the Mountain West. This is a very regional bit of Americana, most Americans aren't familiar with it unless they've driven through the backwaters of that part of the country. Sometimes they are truly out in the middle of nowhere on county roads in the wilderness and such, no other buildings for miles, the novelty of which delights people the first time they see it. Small rural towns usually have multiple espresso shacks.

The coffee is legitimately very good in my experience. It is common in that part of the US to drink coffee with neither milk nor sugar.

Here is nice blog about them with a ton of pictures:

https://roadslesstraveled.us/coffee-kiosks-of-the-west/

This is so interesting. I live in Beaverton, OR, and grew up and often visit Eastern Washington. These coffee shacks are everywhere. I had no idea they were a regional thing. I always assumed they were a national thing since I see them everywhere I visit for the most part. Wild.

I spend a lot of time in Montana, and I guess I took them for granted! Never realized they were regional.

I'm guessing their popularity has grown a bit. I noticed a chain of them when I was in Kansas City a few years ago.

I was put off of these because, the first time I saw them (in Washington state), they were advertised as “bikini” coffee shacks. I had a visceral reaction to this—it felt both creepy (What kind of person would work in such a place? What kind of person patronizes it?) and gross (non-zero probability of pubic hairs in the drink). I think strip clubs are problematic too, but they seem somehow more honest and less creepy because of their transparent purpose.

I’ve heard from others that these places have good coffee, but, perhaps unfairly, I am repulsed by them.

Pack your own coffee for long trips. Cold brew is far easier to do than you might expect.

Mix ground coffee with lukewarm water in a 1:4 ratio and let it sit for 12 to 24 hours. This creates "coffee concentrate". Mix the concentrate 1:4 with water to make your final coffee. (Tweak final ratio to taste: these ratios are set to my personal taste)

Even if you use cheap no-name coffee from grocery stores, the coffee tastes great. Grinding your own beans will result in fresher coffee.

The purpose of "concentrate" is that "concentrate" cold brew is easier to process (less to filter), and easier to store. You can pick up bottled water virtually anywhere in the USA. So carrying around the concentrate is easier.

You can also do cool things with concentrate: like make espresso (add milk instead of water), or "impromptu hot-brew" (boil some water, add the concentrate. Since you have 4:1 hot water to concentrate, your temperature will be 80% of the hot temperature).

With 4:1 final mixing ratio, a quart of concentrate becomes 1.25 gallons of coffee, more than enough for most trips.

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"Ball" mason jars are pretty universal in the USA. I'm pretty sure they're sold everywhere (more common than quality coffee at least, lol). So you shouldn't have any issues getting mason-jar equipment for storing liquids.

Just don't use their leaky white-plastic caps. Use their gray "leak proof" caps or their steel-caps if you actually want a liquid-tight seal.

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Alternatively, drink McDonalds coffee. Its actually not bad. I know plenty of foodies who avoid McDonalds EXCEPT for their coffee.

>>drink McDonalds coffee. Its actually not bad

I'd agree with that, but with the additional comment that it depends on your region of the country. In some area's it's not just "actually not bad", I'd assert "very good". McDonald's often customizes it's menu to the local region. In New England, McDonald's serves Newman's Own coffee, which I quite enjoyed. At least, they did when I lived there a decade ago - who knows now.

Addendum to the "or drink McDonalds". Circle-K has very good coffee these days, and you can generally choose between several different roasts.

What about tea? Are there places on the American highways where you would get it?

Carry your own tea bags or loose with a filter and ask for hot water.

As a big tea drinker, my solution to this when I've been on long road trips has been to use a car-outlet-powered water boiler (the coil kind). You can get them on Amazon for under $10 and they work alright. Though it's hard to do without a passenger unless you're willing to pull over and wait 10 minutes for the water to boil. And where I've driven (up the 15 from Los Angeles to Montana), there are somewhat-frequent Starbucks, though I like my own tea better.

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