Our cost to travel accross country

New comers and not so new comers often think of wandering the country. Not full time but being on the road for several weeks. The biggest question is what does it cost?

The most obvious answer is how and where do you camp.

If you go the State Park to fish for a week then come home, it is pretty simple; mileage there, mileage back divided by towing mileage times price per gallon plus camp fees and miscellaneous expenses.

However, what about if you sight see and drive to all the tourist traps on the way? Well I recently came across the information we have, from a two-month trip around AZ in March two years ago.

We spent 58 days on the road, with the intention to see everything on the way.

?  We left with a full pantry. No sense leaving food at home.
?  A refrigerator full of food, including the freezer compartment.
?  We towed a total of 5500 miles at 10 mpg.
?  We drove and additional 3000 miles seeing various sights and relatives at 17 mpg.
?  Our average cost per day for everything; camping, gas, snacks, entry fees etc. was $87.00.
?  Our average camping fee was $27.00 / night. The $40.00 KOA or Yogi camping fees were offset by the $10.00 a night City Park or primitive campground fees. We do not use Wal-Mart or other such free spots. Our preference is State or County Parks.
?  Of the $50.00 a day non-camping cost, we spent just under $20.00 a day on gas.
?  Our average length of stay was 2 days, usually 1 day overnight traveling and 2 days at our destination.


We have the advantage of being retired so we are not usually on a schedule, if we do have to be some place at a certain time, we allow plenty of wander time. We are also seasoned camper from a canoe and tent background so a night or two of boonedocking in a TT, to take in a special sight, is not an issue.
 
I am sure there are those who are more fugle and those who would never stay at a campground with a pit toilet. I hope the information above may give you some insight if you decide to just take off and go.

Safe travels

We put everything on  a credit card when we travel. At the end of the trip we pay off the card and figure our average cost.

Our last six week trip through Oregon, Nevada, Utah and California averaged $110 per day for everything.  That included some clothes my wife bought. 

Great information. Thanks!

As of now, my trips are fishing events. So my expenses are minimal. Excluding the tournament fees of coarse. 

Great info, thanks for posting!  I'm going to move this thread to "General Discussion" since it can apply to all RV'ing, and so more forum visitors will see it. 

Hi RGB and all,

I really enjoy figuring out the costs of RV'n. Even if it cost more, I'd still camp.

Here are some of my costs I experienced for a good couple of months on the road and camping.

$24.54 = Cost of Camp Grounds Per Day (using discounts & staying longer) (we didn't boondock or stay at SP or county parks)
$11.05 = Cost of Fuel per Day                (I get 7.6 mpg towing a car)             
$  9.87 = Cost of Motor Home Each Day  (based on cost of unit and how long I plan to keep it)

Final Cost:  $45.46 Day  (I don't include food as you have to eat no matter where you are at, home or RV'n)

$14.05 = Cost of Food (Eating Out/Home) We eat out at restaurants a couple of times a week. We try to take advantage of specials.

I Estimated it wold cost $78.68 Cost for Van/Food/Motel/Fuel but that might be higher at this time. (New Van,Food Costs and Low Price Motels.)

My wife and I are not complete RV newbies as we have rented some motorhomes, but you might as well call us that when it comes to a long trip.  I was intrigued by your post.  I have a question I need someone with experience to answer: How can you do a "road trip" without planning every day and overnight location?  What is realistic? What is not?

We are currently shopping Class C on the short side (24-26').

Your advice would be appreciated.....

Tom and Debra

Tom and Debra,
A lot depends on where and how you travel. If you want to hit the big tourist destinations in prime season, reservations at the major locations would be highly recommended IMHO. If you want a specific style of RV Park, either public or fancier parks, you might need reservations enroute. We travel mostly in the West, are capable of boondocking for prolonged periods, and we don?t mind mom and pop campgrounds while enroute. We hardly ever make reservations. We look up possibilities after lunch, call to check availability, and then find the spot we stay that night. Then again we have a tendency to hit the popular places Sunday through Friday, and we generally find a private park for the weekend.

Interesting reading.....my wife and I are in the.process of.buying our first fifth wheel and plan on spending about the first year just bouncing around.  Then we plan on doing seasons at single destinations.  We have done a lot of touristing on motorcycles, sometimes for a couple weeks straight......food, gas, hotel/campground, shopping and activities averages out to about 80 dollars a day..

How can you do a "road trip" without planning every day and overnight location?

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In addition to what Pam says, we've found that, except for holidays, state parks seem to generally have some openings without reservations during the week (Sun through Thurs nites), but weekends generally require reservations through the summer (6 months in advance in Colorado). We rarely make reservations more than a few hours in advance, generally just looking up what's in the area when we're a couple of hours from where we decide to stay for the night, then calling to be sure of availability. So long as it's before about 4:00-4:30 we rarely find commercial RV parks full at that point.

Preplanning the way you suggest would be too restrictive, in most cases, since we're not sure how far we'll go each day. Granted, at the beginning of the day we have an idea what/where, but that's always subject to change.

But when it comes to certain rallies, we'll usually reserve in advance, sometimes as far as six months in advance, for the rally itself, but not for the travel to/from. And we avoid holiday weekends. We also like to go in spring or fall to the more major attractions, since they're less busy, so that alleviates excessive preplanning.

That being said, we do usually have a general idea where we want to go before leaving on a trip, and some idea of when we want to get there, but weather can affect our plans, as can sudden enroute decisions that may delay us a day or three getting where we want to go.

So the general idea is there, along with a tentative time frame, but detailed planning is rare, and too restrictive.

As an example, right now we may want to go to Yellowstone in the fall, possibly in mid-late September, provided other things don't come up to get in the way, but that decision won't come before mid-August at the soonest, perhaps later. We also are currently signed up for an FMCA rally in Gillette, WY in mid-July for four nights. We'd also like to think about some place after Gillette, perhaps in Montana (Glacier?) or Idaho (Couer D'Alene?) or Iowa (Amana Colonies?), but the Michigan UP is an attractive option at some point, too. We probably won't decide for sure until we're at the rally.

Hope this helps.

As others have said. Depends.
Now in two trips from Detroit to Las Vegas
First time we drove more or less straight through. Stopping for gas and rest at Flying-J's and the like, so our cost was supper, breakfast and gasoline (lunch on occasion)

Another trip we stopped and took in a few sights. So the cost went up.

I realized I didn?t say anything about costs in my post, and I probably should. We like to travel, not staying in anyone place more than 4-5 days, and we generally drive a lot sightseeing even while the trailer stays in one place. Our fuel bills are serious! We get an average of 10 mpg in the truck towing, but it can drop to 7 in serious mountains. Not towing we average 15-16. We have a diesel, so fuel is $3.00-3.40, sometimes less, sometimes more. Campgrounds we prefer are $10-15 per night on weekdays since we prefer public campgrounds and have the senior pass, quite helpful at federal facilities. Weekends, $35-$45 since we balance roughing it with nicer private parks on the weekends. Remember I said we like to travel? Our truck, bought in August 2015, has almost 80,000 miles on it! It is the travel that is expensive, not the campgrounds.

Oh, and we will be at the Gillette FMCA rally too in our new motorhome! I figure it is a good way to get lots of information since it probably will be picked up in June.

yes, very interesting! 
I wish now that I would have crunched the numbers after our 19 day trip last summer out to the canyon and back....

I do remember thinking on that trip about relating what were were spending to a theoretical future in retirement, travelling and site seeing along the way.  I recon in many ways it would be about the same....meaning I've got some more time to put in at work! 

Great info here. We're taking a similar adventure late summer, early fall. Upstate NY to Dakotas, Montana, Yellowstone. Great to hear advise from campers that have already experienced the adventure.

How can you do a "road trip" without planning every day and overnight location?  In 2 weeks we are doing our 17th trip across the U.S., heading home to Ocala, FL.  We never make reservations ahead of time except when we plan to stay in Santa Cruz, CA at the private RV resort on the west side.  Only one space and $0.00 per night.  Been there for 1 month already.  We just travel with a cell phone, "The Next Exit", a lap top and our kids inheritance.

As an example of why we don't do much preplanning, other than in general terms, here's an excerpt from my post above in April, then info on current plans (with reservations*, yet, unusual for us):

As an example, right now we may want to go to Yellowstone in the fall, possibly in mid-late September, provided other things don't come up to get in the way, but that decision won't come before mid-August at the soonest, perhaps later. We also are currently signed up for an FMCA rally in Gillette, WY in mid-July for four nights. We'd also like to think about some place after Gillette, perhaps in Montana (Glacier?) or Idaho (Couer D'Alene?) or Iowa (Amana Colonies?), but the Michigan UP is an attractive option at some point, too. We probably won't decide for sure until we're at the rally.

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I bring this up because we now are meeting our oldest son in Bozeman, MT after Gillette, and then a couple of days in Yellowstone then to visit wife's niece in Billings. We had no clue about this when I wrote the above quote.


* reservations because we knew when and where we needed to be to see our son and grandkids. And it was snug getting those reservation -- little was available. Previous tentative "plans" were predicated on more off season travel to Yellowstone.

We're rigidly flexible, sometimes???