Planning a road trip or just curious? Here are some statistics from our road trip that started in Arlington, VA and ended (temporarily) in San Jose, CA.
We traveled through 11 states in 125-days, December 27th through April 30th.
Drove 8,235 miles and paid $951 for gas. The one car repair – a flat tire – was repaired free of charge.
Nights we stayed in or with …
Motels – 54 – 43% (higher than planned due to 7 days of bad weather)
Campsites – 30 – 24% (lower than planned)
Friends – 14 – 11% (slightly lower than expected due to friends having the flu, so we opted to stay in a hotel instead)
AirBnB – 27 – 22%.
Average cost of accommodations per day for the 2 of us: $67.60. We went over our budget of $55.55/day. We should have foreseen that bad weather would catch up with us sooner or later. Cold and rain in Florida drove us into motels.
Average cost of food and incidentals per day for the 2 of us: $74.41. We were saved by under spending here, since our budget for food and incidentals had been $100/day. Why so high? We assumed three solid meals a day and found we don’t eat that much food. We also tended to not spend as much money for incidentals. The incentive to buy “things” goes way down when you know that whatever you buy needs to be packed into the already overfull car. (Though we do admit to several miniature golf games.)
to be continued…
May 2013