I am reminded of what a revelation I found The Hobbit to be, having grown up reading more recent children's and YA fantasy quests. The amount of attention paid to the difficulties of travel, energy output versus consumption, the weight of supplies, the disorientation of hunger, the boredom of the experience, the fact that ponies need actual care and are not all-terrain vehicles... For me, the logistics of the quest were the most entertaining parts of the book, because the imitators I grew up with usually placed little to no emphasis on such things, unless to briefly forward the plot in some way.