Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Road Trips and the Broke Single Mom


Photo Credit Ingles


Used to be back in the olden days (like in the 50's and 60's) that when people said they were going on vacation it almost always meant a road trip. However, lower airline fares and more transportation choices like trains and buses changed all that.

But when the economy tanked in 2008 staycations and road trips became the "it" thing once again.

Most people think of cramped quarters, long drives and cranky kids when they hear the words Road Trip. But with all of the new technology available these days and so many cool places to visit you should be open minded and give the old fashioned road trip a chance :)

When I think of a road trip I think of getting a chance to visit a great new place or revisit an awesome attraction that my kids and I already love. I also think of the fact that it means a super low cost getaway.

On our family road trips we pick a destination within a 10 hour drive (usually less), pack a nice lunch, grab our pillows, a few movies and the laptop. I make sure to have my favorite music and away we go.



And the savings more than makes up for the long drive. A couple of years ago I priced a trip to Williamsburg Virginia. With the airline tickets, theme park tickets, and hotel it came in at around $1,100 for me and my oldest son and grand daughter.

I immediately started looking for alternatives, since we really did want to do a theme park vacation. I almost did Amtrak until I figured out the price of gas for the round trip drive.

Turns out it was less than $100 round trip for gas and my car can hold 5 people. I booked a hotel with free breakfast through Hotwire.com for less than $225 and the theme park tickets came to $180 including free parking. That brought my grand total to $505, which means by driving I saved $595.

And guess where those savings went? A trip to Chicago :) So for the same price as one trip we got two fabulous trips and actually it ended up being less than the $1,100 since our Chicago trip was around $450.

So give it a shot, what do you have to loose?

3 comments:

Patrice said...

This post brought back memories of summer vacations spent on road trips to relatives in Pittsburgh, PA, Gary, IN, and Milwaukee, WI. Every August in the 60s, my dad would pack the family in the car and drive to each location. We would spend several days in each spot and return to DC two weeks later. So driving long distances has never bothered me like it does some people. I even drove my daughter and her friend from DC to Plymouth MA for a conference I attended there. The trip took the entire day, but we thoroughly enjoyed it because we got to see a lot of cool sites along the way. Now that I'm living on an island, long road trips aren't possible, but there are lots of sites I've yet to see on Oahu and look forward to hopping in the car and seeing them.

Broke Single Mom said...

Hi Patrice, I remember my moms old station wagon "Betsy", we would travel all over when we lived in florida. And you are a trooper for sure, A whole day driving is a bit much for me lol.

Peter James said...
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