With all the traveling that I've been doing lately, I've tried to find good ways to eat in a semi-healthy manner while not paying an arm and a leg to do so.  Let me tell you something...it's not that easy to do.  Not only are healthy meal alternatives not readily available for most travel situations, but when you can find them they tend to be much more expensive than the rest of the "regular" items available.  I recall that when I was traveling by air through LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York, there were many healthy options available but there was no way that I was going to pay upwards of eight dollars for a simple sandwich, just so it had yogurt based dressing on it and whole wheat bread, rather than mayonnaise and full-gluten white bread.  Now that I just traveled by automobile today through the midwest up to New York, I can report that there are nearly no healthy options available at most restaurants that you find surrounding the free way and toll roads, and you can forget about finding a single healthy option item at a rest stop restaurant.  I almost ran into a jam today as I was getting started with my travels.  I was so anxious to get myself ready and on the road at a decent hour in the morning in preparation for my eleven or so hour drive that I forget to eat any breakfast.  Most days I usually just have a granola bar and then some fruit on my break at work, but today I didn't think to have anything.  I had thrown some healthy snacks in the car, but nothing was particularly appropriate at the breakfast hour of eight in the morning.  A little while down the road my stomach was rumbling, and the pita chips and salty mini rice cakes that I had brought along for the road were not sounding too appealing that early in the morning.  I figured that I would take a chance and stop at a large travel plaza at the first big city that I came to.  Although I was pleased to find there were a few healthy food options available, I was shocked to find the price that they were charging for them.  I don't think that I would have given anything a second thought before I started working at a grocery store, but now that I am in tune with what things cost at a typical store, I couldn't believe my eyes at what this particular store was charging.  Rather than the typical per pound price for fresh fruit, every that they had, no matter how sketching looking it was, was one dollar and twenty-nine cents a piece.  I had to laugh that my usual banana that I had on my break would cost that much when it usually costs about forty or fifty cents at my store.  I decided to pay the exorbitant amount for a banana and then looked a little bit further for something for lunch.  I ended up finding some of those little lunchables fun packs with meat, cheese, and crackers...normally one dollar and thirty-nine cents a piece at the store.  I wasn't surprised to find that this place was charging almost three dollars for them.  Shaking my head, I knew that this would be my only option for something half way decent and not fast food while on my trip.  I shelled out the money and just took comfort in the fact that my arteries would thank me tomorrow.  So my advice to any of you doing some traveling is to plan ahead with a little cooler with ice packs.  Pack it up with things that you want to eat that will be nutritious and delicious...unless of course you and your arteries don't mind having that fast food stuff.