Couple questions - Road trip from Chicago to Portland OR

We're going to be driving out to Portland OR in a couple weeks and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for culinary destinations along the way (or in Portland, but I think friends there have many plans for us already). My wife and I will have our 8 year old daughter along with us as well, but she's a pretty adventurous eater.

Our route out will be along I-80, stopping in Denver, Vernal UT, SLC, the I-84 up through Boise to Portland. Coming back we're doing I-84 to 12 through Lewiston, then I-90 through Missoula, Bozeman, the Badlands, and Sioux Falls. We'll be doing plenty of camping and cooking, so if anyone has any ideas on markets, butchers, or such I'm looking for suggestions on that front as well.

I'm also open to any suggestions on road trip food for the car. We're trying to avoid drive throughs, and while we have some stand-bys for long trips we're looking to change it up for this trip.

Thanks!

I can't offer suggestions about the road trip portion of your question. However, there's a wealth of Portland information in LTH World. I just came back from Portland yesterday. A great eating and drinking city.

Sounds like a terrific trip. Years ago, my husband and I (BC--Before Children) drove out to Idaho and saw many of the same places you are going through.

My only more recent suggestion is one I have posted about before here and later in the same thread--the Augusta Restaurant in Oxford, Iowa. It's about 3 miles off I-80, a bit northwest of Iowa City. Stop in and say hello to Chef Ben and tell him you're from Chicago.

Have a wonderful time!

Augusta Restaurant
101 South Augusta Avenue
Oxford, IA 52322
(319) 828-2252
http://www.augustarestaurant.net/index.shtml

For the home stretch of your drive back, some of Beef's recs in these threads would be within striking distance:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=29270&sp=346160
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=29944
And as a native Oregonian, I highly recommend making some time to drive south along the coast and also east along the Columbia Gorge.

In Hood River, Double Mountain Brewery makes great pizza. Apizza Scholls provided consulting for their pies, which is PDX favorite for New Haven style. We asked for them to go easy on the char since we saw some pies coming out blackened. Last summer, we ordered a seasonal special with amazing heirloom tomatoes.

In Missoula, my husband stopped by Big Sky Brewing for some beers to go.

There is a regional chain of pizza restaurants called Flatbread Neopolitan Pizzeria in ID/OR/UT. They have a great lunch special, and the food exceeded our expectations.

Sorry for the vague descriptions. I don't remember much else being too memorable for food. We were also driving with our dog, so we didn't really want to make long stops.

Have a fun and safe trip. It's such a beautiful part of the country.

Thanks for the suggestions! The Augusta seems like a perfect stop for lunch on our first day.

Our main purpose in visiting Portland is to go to a music festival friends of ours have been trying to get us to go to for years, but we'll definitely be hitting the coast for at least one day. For the Columbia we're stopping around the Dalles on the way out, and then returning much of the same way, but then heading up Rt. 12 to Missoula (and I'm always up for checking out a brewery!) We're heard incredible things about both areas.