Wow we are on to Part 6 of our Family Trip...I do believe. Time is sure a flying, on that note here is a recap. We are heading on a cross country trip to Canada starting May 11, yep driving with a 4yr old. We do not have any credit cards and do not see any happening with the issues we have had. So cash only at this point. With that in mind, we did start planning this in November of 2011 with hopes we will have at least 2,000 for this trip...This is what our little budget has at this point 1,200. Thanks to some major House Emergency and medical issues our little budget took a big hit and we had to dip into it in January and Febuary. With limit $$ there is a lot to do and planning is the key.
With limited resources I knew our biggest eater of the budget would be gas and lodging to compensate for that this is what I did:
First I calculated how many miles, hours and gas it may takes us. A handy little tool for this was mapquest.com. So for us it would take at least 37hrs and cover about 3,147 miles one way. There is also a calculator on mapquest to estimate fuel cost and for us it would be about $850 give our take round trip. Next if you have a phone which we don't have though we do have a lap top on our trip I would need to locate the lowest price gas station in the area we were coming into. A handy tool I use for this is the the website GasBuddy.com or GasPriceWatch.com.
Second since I have figured out what route we would be taking and knowing that we will be crossing at least 7 states. I sat down and in 1/2hr time I had contacted each one of those tourist centers in those states for information. The Awesome thing about this is they will not only send me maps though stacks of coupons for lodging, tourist place, and restaurants. I will also be using the websites find the perfect campground, KOA, and hotels.com. All of this will help us locate the cheapest place to stay.
Lastly I highly recommend getting triple AAA. Not only will this provide you with roadside assistance though it will give you great discounts as well. Let me give you an example, my family loves camping though sometimes with a tent, this doesn't always work. One of our vacations we had reserved a camping spot upon arriving we were informed that they have to close it due to the water being contaminated. So off to find some lodging and needless to say all the campgrounds were full and only thing we could find available was a hotel. When we were registering we flashed our triple AAA cards. The room was $79 a night and we ended up paying $30 a night, not only that we were given Free Breakfast, a coupon for $30 off on a meal for two for local restaurant which we paid only $15 for that and we were also given a voucher for a free museum visit. So next day we went to the museum and ended up walking out with a voucher for 1/2 price for a sea aquamarine visit, this cost for a for a family $20 and we paid $10 and also ended up with Free passes to a lighthouse tour. I could go on though you get the point and also that vacation we ended up doing on a whim because of all the deals we were getting.