Deciding to travel across this great country was easy but trying to determine how to actually get from point A to point B proved to be a bit more complicated than I first thought.<\/p>\n
First, get your basic framework in place – where you think you want to stop, how much can you afford, how long will you be away…stuff like that.\u00a0 Then the\u00a0fun begins, detail by detail.\u00a0But when you are talking about dropping $12,000 for a vacation, I guess detail is warranted.\u00a0 I always assumed we would take an RV but you know that saying about assuming, well, it’s true.\u00a0 I should have never assumed anything.\u00a0\u00a0 I’ve been with the same man for\u00a0almost 20\u00a0years – I should have known that we’d start with opposite opinions. \u00a0\u00a0Every time I said “we’ll rent an RV…” my husband would stop me dead in my tracks.\u00a0 “Do we really need an RV?” he said.\u00a0 “Why not just take our car?\u00a0 Lots of people do this trip in a car.\u00a0 I know this guy at work who…”\u00a0\u00a0That’s the\u00a0point he would always loose me.\u00a0 I kept thinking “Are you INSANE!!??\u00a0 Five weeks in a car with two hormonal 12 year old boys! \u00a0I’m the only girl!\u00a0 I need my space!”<\/p>\n
With an advanced degree in communications, I quickly ascertained my argument that he was just simply out of his flippin’ gourd was not going help us come to an agreement (yeah, I’m quick like that).\u00a0\u00a0 We debated the pros and cons of our travel options.\u00a0 There were many sides to our discussions from the trivial pee breaks to the obligatory Robin Williams RV<\/em> reference but ultimately it boiled down to three key factors:\u00a0 availability, cost, and experience.<\/p>\n On a side note, if you do plan a cross country trip, be prepared to be asked if you have ever seen the movie RV<\/em> by every co-worker, teacher, acquaintance, relative and neighbor.<\/p>\n Availability – The first step to help decide if an RV is right for you is to learn what’s available in your area.\u00a0 When we began our search, we came up with basic criteria.\u00a0 We knew we wanted it to be small, under 25′ to be specific.\u00a0\u00a0 Clean and smell-free also topped my list.\u00a0 More practically, vehicle mileage and miles per gallon were very important factors.\u00a0 With those basic criteria in mind, we started on our search.\u00a0 The internet was an obvious first start.\u00a0 A Google search gave us hundreds of RV sites to review.\u00a0 Most sites allowed us the opportunity to narrow down the search even further by our criteria.\u00a0 Immediately we saw a trend in location and availability – California, Arizona, New Jersey and New Hampshire were the hot beds for rentals.\u00a0 My super reasoning powers allowed me to quickly identify that availability wasn’t a problem for us.\u00a0 We live in New England; New Hampshire is in New England…see where I’m going with this.<\/p>\n Cost – Once we knew the model\/size we wanted was available to us, we moved our discussion to cost.\u00a0\u00a0 My philosophy on vacationing is exactly the same philosophy I employ at work – DO THE MATH.\u00a0 Make a list of all the costs you will occur for the different travel methods.\u00a0 For example, if you were to rent an RV you will need to consider the cost of:<\/p>\n While visiting each dealer, we asked them for a ballpark estimate.\u00a0 The two big questions we got consistently were estimated mileage and timing.\u00a0 As you can imagine, the fees are higher in season.\u00a0 There is also the option to purchase an RV vs. renting.\u00a0 I’ll delve into that topic in a separate blog.<\/p>\n If you think you may want to drive your own vehicle consider<\/p>\n Depending on whether or not you want to camp or stay at hotels, you may also need to consider whether or not you’ll need to pull a pop-up camper or even a trailer for your camping gear.\u00a0 Obviously it is less expensive to camp but will require a lot more planning and towing on your part.<\/p>\n There is always the option to fly.\u00a0 You’ll need to look at flights, car rentals and meals.<\/p>\n When we ran our numbers, we determined that the cost of renting an RV and driving our own vehicle staying in hotels was only a couple hundred dollars. \u00a0The hotel and restaurant costs, even assuming light meals at fast food places, added up quickly, making the rental cost nearly a wash.\u00a0 Again I highly recommend that you run the numbers appropriate for your own travel plans.<\/p>\n One tip when looking at RV rental costs – shop around!\u00a0 We priced out rentals with 4 different dealers and the cost varied by as much as $4,000.<\/p>\n Experience – By experience, I don’t mean whether or not you’ve ever driven an RV.\u00a0 Was your trip enjoyable? Fulfilling? Satisfy your expectation?\u00a0 Did you make the memory you dreamed of making?\u00a0 Understanding the importance of experience became more and more clear with each conversation we had with friends, family, each other and anyone else who wanted to hear about our plans.\u00a0 There are hundreds of ways to approach this trip and everyone knew of someone who did it a little differently.\u00a0 My favorites were the tales of adults who remember being crushed in the back of their parents’ station wagon 30 some odd years ago.\u00a0\u00a0 Or the college kids who jumped into a car with nothing but a backpack and several hundred dollars.\u00a0 The common denominator of all the stories was how it was the best trip of their lives!\u00a0 Everyone with a different flavor but all consistently talked about the experience – “I remember teasing my brother…”; “We were exhausted by the time we got the Grand Canyon…”; “You have to see Crazy Horse.\u00a0 When we were there this guy…”<\/p>\n For me, the deciding factor wasn’t the cost or even the comfort but the experience.\u00a0 I knew at the end of a long day traveling and sightseeing, I wanted to be able to talk to my kids and not compete with the cable in the hotel room.\u00a0 I could see us sitting around the campfire, chatting about the day, joking about the crazy stuff we saw on the trails.\u00a0 When we reviewed our options after all the discussions and research, the answer presented itself.\u00a0 We knew we had access to what we wanted, the cost was close enough either way, we couldn’t have a campfire in our hotel room at night and I’m just not a tent type of girl.\u00a0 So, to answer the question to RV or not to RV – I’m RV’ing!<\/p>\n TIPS<\/p>\n Deciding to travel across this great country was easy but trying to determine how to actually get from point A to point B proved to be a bit more complicated than I first thought. First, get your basic framework in place – where you think you want to stop, how much can you afford, how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[63,64,65,35],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":444,"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
\n