Saving and Paying Our Way Across the Country

As I spent more time on RV message boards, fantasize about retiring on the open road, I was excited to learn that there are plenty of ways to manage money so as to cover your essentials. It was nice to realize, through all of this daydreaming, that I can apply some of this to saving for our summer trips until, you know, we can retire.

Free Overnight Parking
First, take advantage of FREE. While traveling to your next destination, certain businesses allow you to "camp" overnight in their lots, including Walmart, Cracker Barrel, Sam's Club, Costco, Pilot Flying J and Kmart. I put "camp" in quotation marks because an RVers' code of conduct applies when taking advantage of free overnighting.

• Rule one: Get permission. Call ahead or get there in time to talk to the manager. Although this is not required, it is a courtesy that you should always give for their generous free lodging. 
• Rule two: Don't really camp. That means no awnings, lawn chairs or outside fires. Unless given specific permission, do not connect to electric or water, and keep your stay to a single night. 
• Rule three: Patronize the business in the morning. Pick up some essentials before hitting the road again.

Check out Overnight RV Parking for places to park and Frequently Asked Questions to keep you in compliance with the "code."

Free Camping on Public Land
FreeCampsites.net offers a database of free campgrounds and places where you can boondock, or dry camp (no hookups). Because some sites require permits, you'll need to plan out your trips. Most free sites have a time limit for how long you can stay, but there are some that allow for long-term stays. RV Camping on Public Lands has a more than adequate list of resources related to this topic and how you can locate public land for boondocking.

Workamping
While I don't expect this next tip to be useful until we actually retire, I plan to one day be a full-time workcamper. When an RVer workamps, he or she works off their site rental by performing tasks around the campgrounds. You hang out there for a month or so, and then move on to your next job. Trade-offs might also include discounted food or other perks. You contribute the skills you have, travel the country and get to live the dream. Wow. I can't wait.

Workamper News, an online magazine, has a lot of useful information about this retirement career, including webinars and forums.If you're ready to jump in, find jobs at WorkampingJobs.com, Work Camping (yeah, some spell it the correct way), and Work for RVers and Campers. While you're at that last site, check out its Bad Workamping Jobs: 10 Warning Signs from Negative Workamper Experiences article.


Freelance Your Skills
What I'm doing now is what I do best - writing. I contacted my old boss (current friend) and asked if she had any writing jobs to contract out. She's been throwing me a job every week or so for writing, PowerPoint template set up, locating images and other odd tasks.

To fill in the time between those jobs, I applied to and write for Demand Studios. Now, you'll read all kinds of pros and cons for writing for a company like Demand Studios, but, right now, there's only one pro that matters - extra money in my savings account for our trip. In one month, I pulled in an extra $500 writing short articles. Sure, I'm staying up late to do this work, but, when we're hitting the open road this summer, I know it will have been worth it.

There are, of course, plenty of freelance sites out there to help you find gigs, including eLance and Guru. Craigslist also had a lead for me, but I never actually needed the extra work since the above two jobs keep me busy at night.


Other Resources:
FreeCampgrounds.com: Resources
RV.net: Workamping Forum
CampingRoadTrip: How to Become a Workamper
Travels with the Blonde Coyote: Boondocking 101: How to Camp for Free in Beautiful Places

Planning Our First Road Trip

We have ahead of us a two-week drive from Cleveland, OH to Lantana, FL scheduled for mid-June. Being the planner that I am, I have created a full itinerary of our rest stops, camping stops, and activities all along the way. I'm not neurotic, however, so I have some backup tools lined up just in case things don't go quite as planned.

The Plan
Because we're traveling with two small children (Channing will be 11 months and Willie will be 3.5 years), we decided not to travel for more than about 2.5 hours at a time, or 5 hours in one day. So, we'll leave at a reasonable time Saturday morning, drive for about 2.5 hours, stop for lunch and potty breaks, then get back on the road and hit our first campground. Sunday, we'll do the same, but arrive at my brother-in-law's house in Columbia, SC, where we'll spend a few nights. Then, we'll ship off Wednesday morning on the same drive schedule, camp for the night, and then hit my brother's house in Florida the next day. After hanging out at the beach for a few days, we'll pack up and head back to Cleveland, stopping at a different campground each night until we make our way home. Our last stop will be a local dump station before we head home and clean up the RV.

The Tools
Fortunately for us planners, the Web is teaming with little digital tools to assist us with our neurosis -- I mean, planning. Here's a few that I used:

• Google Docs - Where I created the planning spreadsheet that would become my stop-by-stop itinerary. I called it my "Brother Trip 2013" and added the following columns to the first sheet: Date, Time, Action, Location, Cost and Notes. However, I ended up pasting additional information and alternate campgrounds in additional, unlabeled columns. Sheet two included my cost estimation and links for the tools I used.
• Free Map Tools: How Far Can I Travel - The plan is to stop to rest or camp or visit about every 2.5 hours, so I needed a tool that would show me the area I needed to look for stops. This did the job.
• Google Maps - This web application just gets better and better as time goes on (or I figure it out). First, since I could figure out the town where we needed to stop, I could use Google Maps to find campgrounds in that area. I could also use it to look for local attractions and get distances. The handiest, feature, however, is an ability to save locations to a map for sharing. I created attraction maps for Columbia and Lantana so that we had things to do. I shared the Columbia map with my sister-in-law who is helping us figure out what we want to do.
• AllStays Interstate Exit Guide - For our lunch and pit stops, the online AllStays directory allows you to zoom in on the gas stations, restaurants and parks along each interstate, browseable by state. AllStays also provides a series of smartphone apps that make for great "Plan B" options should your plans not play out on your trip.
• RVForum - Never underestimate the value of advice you can get from people who have been doing this for a lot longer than you. Among important things I learned at this forum is that we are going to need a driveway camping "trip" so that we can run into the house for things we forget, followed by a local campground near a Wal-mart for the same reason before he hit the road. Also, there are companies out there like Wal-mart and Cracker Barrel that have no problem letting RVers park for a while or for the night. I never would have known that otherwise. They're helpful for more than planning trips, however, so I highly recommend joining one or two discussion forums related to RVing.

Camp Discount Clubs
There is one caveat to this planning because I didn't just choose my campgrounds based solely on location. According to forum members, regular campers can save some cash using either Good Sam (10% off at participating grounds) or Passport America (50% off with some strings attached). Basically, you can get a good deal on Good Sam ($25 a year) and, if you camp often enough at participating sites, you'll make your money back. Passport America is a little more expensive (around $44 per year), but the 50% discount is going to earn me that money back just on our trip, and we plan on doing a lot more camping all summer long. So, I used the Passport America and Good Sam websites to find campgrounds in the general areas of our scheduled stops, successful in 4 out of 5 stops.

There is one stop that the grand waterfall nearby trumped program participation. Willie loves waterfalls and I didn't want him to miss this one. (P.S. If you opt for Passport America, please use the link in this blog to purchase your membership so that I get credit. Thanks!)

Figuring It Out

1. So, step one was using the Free Map Tools: How Far Can I Travel to estimate where we'd be after driving for about 2.5 hours. On the first stretch of our trip, that put us around Williamstown, WV. 
2. I hopped on over to the AllStays Interstate Exit Guide to see what was available along I-77 near Williamstown. As it turns out, there wasn't a convenient stop in Williamstown, so I decided to look right across the Ohio River in Marietta, OH. There, I found a shopping center right off the interstate, the perfect place to stretch our legs and make a quick lunch. If needed, we can shop Kmart or Wal-mart off this exit and fill up the tank nearby, as well. 
3. I plugged the exit link into my spreadsheet, along with the address of the shopping center as my "midpoint" stop for the day. 
4. Then, I ran the Free Map Tools from Marietta to find out where our first campground needed to be.
5. I checked Passport America and Good Sam websites for participating campgrounds.
6. I used Google Maps to find attractions around the campgrounds and in Columbia and Lantana areas. I plugged info about these places in my spreadsheet, and also saved maps for reference.
7. I repeated this process all the way down to Lantana, FL and back to Cleveland, OH, with stops at my brother-in-law's house in Columbia and my brother's house in Florida.

So, there you have it. The tools I used to play this cross country trip! I hope you find it useful and plan your own cost-effective, family fun road trips.