Trip Reckoning
How much does it cost to camp for 3 months in a rental car?
How can I afford to drive around to national parks, hiking, writing, and filming, for three months straight?
Good question.
A few things really helped. I’m going to be as honest as I can with you here, because I think we all benefit from understanding (each other’s) finances. I’m in a more financially privileged situation than most people who live out of a car, but I did do this with my own money.
I’ve been working in tech (marketing, web development, app development, infrastructure) since 2012. That’s about ten years, some full time and some freelance/contract work. I tend to be frugal and I’ve been living below my means for years. I lived on a sailboat instead of paying rent, for example. I’ve paid off my student loans and my car (same used car since 2013!) and have not taken on other (long-term) debt.
I paid for my trip using my savings and income I made while traveling.
So, how much did it cost?
Bottom line: traveling for three months with two people cost us a collective $5k. That’s about $800 USD per month, per person.
It’s worth noting this includes groceries and a place to stay (even if it is in a rental car), so some of these costs overlap with our regular cost of living. For example, I spend a similar amount on groceries living in a house.
The rental car cost us $620 per month with unlimited miles.
Flying from the east coast to the west coast cost over $800 total, about $400 per person. This is not the best value I could have found for these tickets. I actually purchased these tickets right before the pandemic started, and was unwilling to use them at that time. I changed the dates on those plane tickets at least 5 times, pushing them forwards until we had a chance to actually fly with them. They started out as $250 round trip tickets and ended up at $400 over three years later. Ah well.
We spent about $1k on gas and about $1k on groceries. We (I…) spent $200 on takeout and restaurant food. Our generous friends were kind enough to share some additional dinners with us as well - thank you!!
Foraged fruits and fungi were a not insignificant part of our diet on the road. We identified, collected, and ate:
Over 100 apples (National parks in Utah had historic fruit orchards. Most of the apples we collected were from the ground under the trees, actually, but in fine condition)
Peaches
Plums
Pears
Blackberries
Huckleberries
Oyster mushrooms
Chicken of the woods mushroom
Western giant puffball mushrooms (a first for us!)
We bought a national parks pass for $80 the day after our pass from last year expired. This has been a fantastic value for us. We visited so many national parks (and national recreation areas and monuments, etc, etc)!
Which national parks did we visit?
Lassen Volcanic
Crater Lake
Redwood
Bryce Canyon
Zion
Arches
Canyonlands
Capitol Reef
Great Basin
Yosemite
I’m still editing the videos from several of these parks, but if you’d like to see Lassen, Crater Lake, Redwood, and more, check out my YouTube channel!
The car rental, gas, groceries, and flights are the majority of the expenses on our whole trip. We did not go to museums, pay for boat rides, go to the spa, or even to the laundromat. We didn’t get a hotel in Vegas. We pulled into state parks to check the price and then drove right back out again.
The biggest monetary cost for a trip like this, perhaps, is the opportunity cost. I could make more money than the cost of the trip, if I worked a full time job. There are different kinds of opportunities, though.
This trip was an amazing opportunity to live outdoors, to find incredible rocks, plants, trees, animals, fungi, to focus on experiencing life right now.
That’s worth paying for.
Take care,
Rey
I'm exciting to see you're writing on substack! This actually perfectly lines up with some of the topics I plan to write about. A lot of people out there are looking for a different kind of life, since the existing environments we find ourselves in seems so dysfunctional or dehumanizing in various ways. Nature is always whole, by definition.