How We Can Afford a 9 Week Vacation

When we first started planning this summer's trip, it didn't occur to me that we'd have so many questions about how we could afford such a trip. In the past few years of surrounding myself with people who travel regularly, I had forgotten that most people, especially most Americans, don't travel more than one or two weeks a year. It's amazing how fast we can get into our own little bubble and forget how others live. When we owned a house, we were like that, only traveling a week or two a year, maybe more if you add in weekend trips throughout the year. But we've traveled so much in the past two years that I've gotten into the idea that this is "normal". 

So when I started getting the question "How can you afford to travel for 9 weeks?", it caught me off guard. Then I realized that course many people that I know want to travel more, but the big concern is always money because we've gotten into this idea that travel is too expensive. Personally, I feel that the money spent on travel is so important that it's just a good investment in my life and the education of my children.  

When we were doing fulltime travel, I wrote a post that became the page - Affording Fulltime Travel. While this page is still pertinent, this trip was a little different because we have "settled down" for awhile before hitting the road. And because we'll be going back to a more "settled" lifestyle after this trip, it is classified more as a vacation than a part of the traveling lifestyle.

So today I will attempt to answer the question "How do you afford a 9 week vacation?" in 5 simple steps.

Step 1: Live cheap - Part of the reason we can afford this trip is because we are used to living cheap. When we are "settled" we have very few bills. Because we live in our RV, we stay at a campground and pay a monthly fee that is already cheaper than most monthly rent or mortgage payments. (We pay $500 - $600 a month on monthly rent depending on the campground.) Additionally, this includes our water, electric, sewer and trash pick up, so we have no real utility bills except for a cell phone/internet bill, which we would have if we were in a house or apartment anyways. We also cook 2 - 3 meals a day and buy in bulk as much as possible. (See my previous blog post on how we store a month's worth of groceries in our 30 foot RV.) 

We bought both of our cars and our rv cheap and with cash, ($2k for each car and $4k for the RV) so we don't have any vehicle payments, but we do have insurance. One thing that has been really helpful with insurance is to pay it in advance for six months or a year. Not only do you get a discount when you pay this way, you also have on less bill due out if a month is particularly low on money because of a dip in income or an unexpected expense.

Step 2: Save up a nest egg -  Because we live so cheap, we have money left most months which could easily be used for eating out or other recreation. However we have allotted this "additional" money for two purposes. First we are working on paying down our student loans. Second we save for travel. These are our family's priorities to be debt free and to travel as much as humanly possible. :)
This savings left us with a considerable nest egg for this trip that we have actually only had to dip into it twice. However, knowing the nest egg is there makes it easier to plan a trip without stressing out about things like "What if the RV breaks down?" or "What if someone gets sick?" and from time to time it lets us splurge or conquer an unexpected expense.

Step 3: Get rid of as many "at home expenses" as you can while you're traveling - While we are settled we pay $500 to $600 a month for "rent" and the boys take karate which is another $200 a month. Because we don't own or rent with a lease, these are expenses we DO NOT have while we are traveling. This is a major part of our reasoning to continue to live in our RV when we are settled. By not having those bills at home, we have $800 per month that we can use on gas and overnight stays during our trip. If we even rented an apartment, we would still have to pay rent and utilities while we were traveling, so the traveling would be additional. This way the traveling is included in our every day budget.

Step 4: Travel cheap - If we were to stay at a high end campground every night for 9 weeks, we would spend much more than the $800 per month. Most campgrounds with hook ups range from $25 - 40 a night and while you can get a weekly rate, it's still not going to be nearly as cheap as if you were staying somewhere for a month at a time. So we don't always stay in campgrounds. Actually we rarely stay in what most people think of as a "real campground." Instead, we do a variety of:
 - Bureau of Land Management (BLM) campgrounds [no hook ups or limited hook ups for about $10 - $15 per night]

 - Dispersed camping in National Forests [no hook ups or facilities for FREE as long as you are at least 10 miles from any organized campground and no more than 5 miles from the road]

 - Parking lots of Walmart, Cabelas, casinos and truck stops [no hook ups, but free and legal in most areas] There are some areas of Idaho, Oregon and California, as well as many big cities that DO NOT allow this, so be careful and do your research first. It's not fun to be woken up at 2a.m. and asked to move, or worse to recieve a $200 ticket.

 - Harvest Hosts [After the $50 membership fee, you can park at the associated farms and wineries for FREE as long as you buy something from the farm or winery. No hook ups at most places, but these are often a place that I would pay to go anyways and they're a great way to keep the boys knowledgeable about where their food comes from.]

When we do stay in a "regular campground" we often opt for a water and electric site, which is cheaper than a full hook up site, and then we use the dump station on our way out. We also have a Good Sam's Club membership and an Escapees membership, both of which give us discounts on these campgrounds. Plus, we have spent money to add specific things to our RV that makes it easier to be away from "regular campgrounds". Specifically for this trip we added a solar panel, 2 additional batteries and an inverter which has allowed us to have enough electricity to charge our laptops, watch television or run basic kitchen appliances. We also added a simple composting toilet that decreases the need to find a dump station. When we do need to find a dump station, most campgrounds will let you come in and dump for about $10.

In addition to choosing cheap accomodations, we tend to choose cheap attractions. We aren't drawn to the amusement parks and tourist traps anyways, so we visit National Parks, State Parks, Monuments and museums along the way. On this trip alone, the boys have gotten 15 Jr. Ranger badges and visited 4 science museums. For the National Parks, we currently have a 4th Grader "Every Kid in a Park" Pass, but would definitely pay the $80 for an annual pass if we didn't qualify for this. For the science museums, we have purchased an ASTC annual pass membership from the Western North Carolina Nature Center for $70.  

And of course the other big expense when traveling is food. For this expense, we cook ... a lot. :) Seriously traveling with an RV is great for this because I can cook breakfast, lunch and dinner if needed as we carry a regular household's food supply. When we leave the RV to do a day trip, we pack sandwiches, snacks and water. 

Of course this is not to say that we never splurge. We've paid for waterslide rides and carnivals this trip. We've gone out for a few meals and visited a few "tourist traps". However, by traveling cheap most of the time, we have money to splurge sometimes.

Step 5: Work on the Road - During this trip, we've had a little bit more money because I am still getting paid from my teaching job. This is of course money I already worked for and earned, but that the school holds and pays out over the summer to help teachers budget better. 

However, in addition to this, I am still making money from my teacher resource business: Raki's Rad Resources and my husband is making money from his language resource business: Raki's Rad Language Resources. Making this money means that even while we're traveling, we are still taking time to work. It's flexible time that we can fit in around our travel plans, but it's still work time. In fact I am writing this blog post while my husband drives us to our next destination. 

Occasionally we have to rearrange vacation plans to work. For example, the other day, my husband recieved a large order for his Arabic Letter Stencils that needed to be shipped right away. Instead of going exploring one morning, we stayed put and gave him a few hours to put them together. Once they were put together, we pushed on and still had a lovely family day, arriving at Gnekow Family Winery and having plenty of time to explore the surrounding area.

So that's my answer to how we have afforded this vacation: live cheap, travel cheap and work along the way. Doesn't sound fun or sexy, huh? But when you look at all we've seen and done, it's totally worth it. Here are just a few pictures of where we've been over the past 6 weeks:

Mesa Verde, CO

Lake Powell, AZ

Bryce Canyon, UT

Salt Lake City, UT

Twin Falls, ID

Boise, ID

Hood River, OR

Florence, OR

Shasta Lake, CA

Lake Tahoe, CA

Sacramento, CA

San Francisco, CA

Let Go of Expectations and Just Drive!!!

One of the most common questions we've gotten during this trip, aside from my "favorite" - Where are you from? (which can be answered in this old blog post), is "What's your final destination?" Ummmmm..... That's difficult because our final destination is really a return to where we started - Albuquerque. That's where we're "settled" for the moment and where we have to return on August 1st. But that's not where we're going. See the thing is this trip isn't about driving to one hyped up place and experiencing it. This trip isn't about ending up someplace fabulous. This trip is about the journey. It's about all the amazing places "in between". 

For those of you who haven't seen, here is our loose "travel plan" for this summer:

We left Albuquerque on May 28th and we'll return on August 1st, but we're not going any place in particular. We're exploring areas a bit at a time. We have semi-specific time frames set out for each area, but these are mainly to ensure that we make it back to Albuquerque for the beginning of the school year. We have researched enough about each area to know some general things we want to do in each area, but that's really just a jumping off point.

You see often the best experiences are not planned and planned experience often don't live up to the expectations you have for them.

When we were in Southern Utah, one of the big things I wanted to do was visit Zion National Park because I had heard such amazing things about it. I was sure it would be amazing. The expectations in my head were already built up the experience to astounding proportions. Unfortunately due to issues with our RV (just some overheating because of the mountainous area) we were parked almost 2 hours away from the park. We did make the drive down, but we chose the wrong day, as it was 105 degrees out and the park was packed. It was also a Sunday which meant that the ranger programs (which were required for the Jr. Ranger badges) were at really weird times. All in all, we never ended up hiking at Zion, although we did play in the river. It was a bust day and we all ended up feeling a little bit dissapointed. That is until we got back to our dispersed camp site in the middle of Dixie National Forest. We hadn't planned to camp there, but it was convenient when the RV was overheating. However, that was one of the coolest camping experiences of the entire trip. Tucked away in the forest away from civilization, the ability for the kids to practice making a big campfire with their fire starter, tons of stars to look at each night, it was great. So was Bryce Canyon which was much closer to our campsite and much cooler in temperature.

A few days ago, we visited Golden Spike National Monument which was cool, and we learned a lot. It was on the plan. What wasn't on the plan was meeting a lovely mother and daughter who suggested we stop by Spiral Jetty. This huge man made earth sculpture is on the side of Salt Lake and it's amazing. It laid underwater for 30 years and has only been visible since 2002, but it was fantastic and impactful and mesmorizing. We went down and hiked around it, meeting a lovely couple from Belgium a long the way, opening us up to having a great conversation in French.

Then just today I had planned this great history lesson for my kids at the Minidoka National Historical Site. We turned up and realized there really wasn't much to see. However, a little bit later we drove across an amazing bridge over Snake River Canyon while looking for a grocery store. It was beautiful and amazing and completely unplanned, but we got out, hiked, took pictures, visited the visitor's center and enjoyed. 

This trip is teaching me to focus on some universal truths that I kinda knew, but never thought about:

1.) The journey is way more fun than arriving at a destination.

2.) Expectations can turn a good experience into a bad one.

3.) The best things in life are not planned.

Since we aren't quite a third of the way through our trip, I'm sure I will learn more and more as we go and I'll be happy to share those thoughts here. 

Our Night at an Alpaca Ranch

So for those of you who have been following along, you know that we have been “semi-permanently settled” in Albuquerque since January. My oldest is thriving in a public middle school and all three of the boys are loving going to karate at the same gym three times a week. However, our compromise when we decided to settle was that we would travel all summer long. So we hit the road on May 29^th and we will be traveling all summer long, with the goal of returning to Albuquerque on August 1^st.

Our very first stop was Aztec Ruins National Monument in Aztec, NM, which funny enough is a complete misnomer because the Aztec Ruins are really the ancestral grounds of the Pueblo Native Americans. At the ruins, the boys earned their 20th Jr. Ranger Badge and we enjoyed a great history lesson.

After our hike, we went up to Colorado to stay at Pleasant Journey Alpaca Ranch. I had made arrangements a few days ahead of time to stay on this farm through our Harvest Host membership. (For more information on HarvestHosts, check out my previous post on Buying Local While You Travel.) The hosts Susan and Glenn Kacsh were wonderful! They provided us with a flat place to park and a little table outside where we could eat while we watched the alpacas. In fact we could even see the alpacas from our own couch!

We took long walks around, enjoying the amazing views of the San Juan mountains. This gave the boys a chance to really run around and “be boys” for awhile. The hosts had plans to give us a tour that night, but unfortunately one of their newborn calves was having trouble breathing and they had to take him to the vet. However, the next morning Susan gave us wonderful tour of the ranch. On the tour, we got up close and personal with the alpacas, visiting the baby and mother alpacas, the herdsires and all of the other alpacas. Susan told us about the processes for sheering and breeding alpacas. She was very knowledgeable, recognizing each of the over 50 alpcas by name, parentage and attributes. The boys learned so much and were able to ask her questions as we went.

Before we left, we visited her store where she sells alpaca fleece, hand spun alpaca yarn and professionally milled alpaca yarn, as well as rugs, scarfs and other things made from the alpaca yarn. The boys each picked out a little finger puppet and we got some lovely dark brown yarn for my aunt who likes to knit. If you’re looking for alpaca yarn or any products using it, you should consider contacting Pleasant Journey Alpaca Farm!

This was such a great experience! I can’t wait for our next Harvest Host experience. If you’re interested in signing up for a Harvest Host membership, feel free to use my name “Heidi Raki” under the referral code and we’ll both get an extra month added to our membership.

5 Ways to Buy Local While You Travel

As a family we try to buy locally no matter where we are. This is much easier when we are stable for longer periods of time like we have been in Albuquerque since January. Now that we have hit the road again for the next nine weeks, we have be slightly more creative when trying to support local business and farmers. It’s really easy to slip into buying from big box stores that are convenient, but not always great for the economy or the environment of the places we are visiting. So, how do we buy locally while we’re on the road? Here are a few ways:

1.) Find the local farmer’s markets – Most areas have weekly farmers markets, especially in the summer. A simple google search for “farmer’s markets in (whatever city you're in)” will generally give you a list of markets, as well as times and locations. We also try to stop at roadside stands whenever we see them.

2.) Check Craigslist – Farmers who sell local eggs and local honey often advertise on craigslist. They will often meet you out somewhere or you can pick things up at their location if you’re comfortable with that.

3.) Scour the bulletin boards at local haunts – Small supermarkets, laundry mats and restaurants often have bulletin boards where locals can post small advertisements for goods, services and events. This is especially true in smaller towns. We have used these boards to find eggs for sale, weekly farmer’s markets and even craft fairs.

4.) Ask the locals – I used to watch Rachel Ray’s $40 a Day and one of her biggest tips was always to ask a local where the best restaurants are. This is a tip we have used not only for restaurants, but also for farmer’s markets, things to do, and pretty much anything that we might want or need while we’re in an area. If you want to support local, ask the locals!

5.) Harvest Hosts – This trip we have added a new method of finding local farmers to support. Another fulltime RVer referred us to Harvest Hosts, which is a network of farms and wineries that will allow you to stay a night or two on their property (in your RV) for free. These are mainly dry camping opportunities, but the program allows you to find plenty of farms you would have never found otherwise. The membership fee for the program is only $45 a year and then you are asked to purchase something at each farm you stay at, which is kind of the point for us. Our first Harvest Host stay was at an alpaca farm and it was so cool that it deserves its own blog post, so come back in a few days and I’ll post pictures and a description of that fun night!

Do you have any tricks for buying local while you’re traveling? I’d love it if you shared your tips in the comments. It’s great when we all learn from each other!