Cross country trek, bought a boat, travelled on the cheap....

**PrairieRose** · 07-04-2006, 02:34 PM

and had a wonderful time! Gripey and I bought a boat off of ebay (gasp!). This past week we took off from Texas to Grand Rapids, MI to get it. We drove a total of 2600 (give or take a few). The gas was costly alright. The boat is big and the trip home cost a lot more than the first leg. We're so happy with the boat. We had a boat like this years and years ago. Sold it b/c our kids were involved in so much that we didn't have time to take it and them to the lake. After about 3 years we began to regret having sold it. The boat is actually still owned by a guy here in town and he never uses it but isn't interested in selling it either. Anyway we found a very similar boat on ebay, bid and won it. It's not in perfect condition, but it's good, very good. It needs a good cleaning up and some small maintanence things done but otherwise it's very good. Can't wait to use it.

Anyway, we travelled very cheap. We poured up bottles and bottles of our own water, took an electric cooler that the kids gave Gripey years ago for father's day. That thing kept our ice frozen for 3 days, not being plugged in at night and all. Anyway we bought 1 bottle of water on the trip....and really that's b/c we went into Braums' to use the facilities and felt like we should buy something (silly I know but anyway). We took our own snacks to save money and to avoid the temptations of our "usual" travel comfort foods (i.e. JUNK). That saved us both ways. We stayed in great hotels for great prices except for one night when we visited friends in Indiana that we hadn't seen in 10 years. They insisted that we stay and fed us steaks for dinner and h.m. cinnamon rolls and fruit for breakfast. (not good on the diet but OOOOOhhhh so good!) We had a wonderful visit and I'm thrilled to have seen them again. Hope they come to Texas someday so we can reciprocate.

It really does pay off to plan ahead, prepare to save money and honestly it felt so good to not plop down $1 or more everytime we had a bottle of water (which was VERY often b.t.w., b/c it's all we drank). The scenic drive was free and so enjoyable (free minus the gas....gulp) and the food we ate was great too. We were lucky in that aspect as sometimes when we travel we are disappointed in the food. Not this time though. We ate one really good meal a day and then ate light the other 2 meals.

The moral of the story is: Don't be skeered. If you're wanting to travel this summer you can do it, even though the gas is gonna cost ya you can economize in other ways and still have a wonderful time.