Travelling Gluten Free with Fibro

Just three years ago I posted about our last trip to Colorado Springs, it was a much different trip. I don’t remember a lot about that trip other than I spent a lot of time in our hotel room taking naps, and avoiding being touched by my family. This year we headed back out for my niece’s graduation and my brother’s first comment was “good we can touch you!”

Despite what I posted after our last trip, we still booked our flights out of Nashville, which involved a two-hour drive each way and an overnight hotel stay before our flight to Colorado. Also, we ended up with a triple-hop flight each way (two lay-overs), and non of our layovers were very long. Despite all of that, I still was able to make it through and not just make it through, but fully enjoy this trip. In addition to dealing with Fibro, this year we added the additional speed bump of me being gluten-free.

The hardest part about travelling when you are gluten-free is figuring out where you can eat, and this goes double when you are flying. I did a few things to make the whole gluten-free thing go easier for us.

1. Planning – A few days before we left home I pulled up the FindMeGlutenFree website to see what options there were in the Colorado Springs area. I recalled that Coquette’s Bistro, a restaurant we found on the last trip and loved, had gluten-free crepes. I didn’t realize that their entire menu is actually gluten-free. What really surprised me was the sheer number of restaurants with gluten-free options or menus in the Springs area, and most of them were places I’d never heard of. When I use
the website/app here all I get are National chains, so this got me really excited and looking forward to our trip.

2. Hotel Choice – When I booked our hotel I looked for one with a kitchenette. I was pleasantly surprised that our hotel went above that with a full kitchen (2 burner stove and a full size fridge). This allowed us to stock our kitchen when we arrived with foods to keep us going through our trip. I was able to buy some juice to get me started each morning. This kept us from eating out nearly as much as we would have normally. Of course, that was kind of a downer since I’d found so many places I wanted to try!

3. I packed snacks. Lots of snacks. We had half of one backpack that was full of nothing but snack bars, apples & nuts for the flights. I wasn’t going to assume we’d have time to eat. As luck would have it, we did have time to eat each way (barely). We got to the Nashville airport early enough to grab breakfast at Noshville. And when we headed back from Co. Springs, we managed to get ourselves on an earlier flight which gave us enough time to grab food in the Denver airport. Despite having the time, I didn’t think I’d get to eat. We weren’t having a lot of luck finding food options (that I could eat) and just when I was about to give up, I finally thought to try the “Find Me Gluten Free” app and just see if anything showed up in the airport. Amazingly, not only did a couple of restaurants show up on the list, but there was an Udi’s Cafe.

GF Carrot Cake – OMG!

I’d like to say that everything went perfectly. The bulk of our trip went well, it wasn’t until we returned home that we hit a road bump. After landing in Nashville, we were both starving and needed to eat. I was too hungry to care much where but I pulled up the FindmeGlutenFree app and read off the list to Paul. We were both surprisingly disappointed at how few options we had. We were back in the land of major chains with few other options. Initially, we thought we’d grab a burger at a local chain that has gluten-free buns (at one location and nasty GF buns at the other), unfortunately they were closed for a private event. Our next choice was a pizza chain that has a pretty good GF crust. We sat down and ordered, no problem. I was so tired that I didn’t even notice that the crust on my pizza was a lot thicker than GF crust usually is, but after a couple of bites I did notice that it was doughy. After trying to flag down our waitress with no luck I finally got the attention of a manager. When I reported my issue to him and mentioned that I was GF, he had this look of terror on his face. “That’s supposed to be a gluten free? That’s not the gluten-free crust”. Oh Crap! I’d survived 4 days of travel only to get glutened on the drive home!? 

It turned out the girl had never entered a GF order and somehow thought that the “no polenta” button was the same as “no gluten”. Needless to say I got a new pizza and it was free. Luckily, I had some enzymes on me, which I took right away. We also headed over to Whole Foods and picked up some Kombucha that I drank on the drive home. I believe the combination of having been off gluten for so long combined with taking the enzymes and Kombucha allowed me to wake up on Tuesday feeling reasonably normal. The thought presented that perhaps I could do gluten on occasion, but I think I’ll continue avoiding it with the happy knowledge that should I get hold of a little the reaction won’t be nearly as bad.

In other news, the abdominal pain was horrid while we were in CO. I don’t know if the altitude affected it or if it was the added exertion of hiking through the airport with bags and/or hiking through the Red Rocks. I will say that Garden of the Gods is much more enjoyable when you actually feel like getting out of the car. If the hiking was the cause of the pain, it was worth it. Luckily, I am set to return to the specialist next week to see what he wants to do since this has now been going on for a year.