Map of 2007 Western Trip and final accounting

Darned vacations posts are overlapping. If you are confused, well, so am I. Trust me, all of this planning and post morteming is a heck of a lot of work. That map below took weeks, but it is accurate.



The credit card bills are in and now all I have to do is pay up on the 2007 Western Trip. Let's see how I did. 89 days on the road.....

Gas $1,991.75
Food and Wal-Mart (consumables) $ 841.65
Lodging $ 0.00 (ha!)
Restaurants $ 91.71 (another ha!)
Cargo Box $ 263.00
Assorted gear $ 463.00
Vehicle repair $ 87.66
Athletic Clubs $ 49.00
Camping Fees $ 20.00

Sub Total $3,807.81
Unaccounted for cash $ 250.00
Total $4,057.81

I did buy a computer and a camera to go on this trip, total additional costs $1300.00 but I will not add that to the overall trip costs because the camera and computer would have been incurred with or without the trip and I am left with those devices in working order, well sort-of (note to self: don't throw laptop). The same could be said for the camping gear but I probably wouldn't have bought the stuff if I wasn't traveling so the gear was left in the final accounting, I will be getting lots of good use out of the gear in the future though. With my inevitable bad luck I knew that the minute I set foot in my car that gas costs would skyrocket so I had budgeted for the escalating fuel costs, its sort of sad that I have to do that, if I didn't have bad luck I'd have no luck at all. I had a mental budget of $5K for the trip but did not make any effort to keep an accounting log while traveling so I am pleased that I came in substantially under-budget, I'm such a colossal tightwad.

The 3.5 week cross country trip that I took with my friend back in 1982 cost $450.00, what a difference a few years makes. Back then gas was $0.48/gallon or some such, but this time I got to do what I wanted to do and I didn't have to listen to 3 weeks of bellyaching from a militant lesbian. Stay tuned for my BLM and National Forest tour in 2015, hopefully by then I will be using solar-powered vehicle.

I challenge anyone, even you hitchhikers, to pull off what I did for less money.