There was someone on the budget board, MrsPete maybe?, who was planning a trip like this and had a detailed budget. They originally were going to rent an RV, but with gas prices rising significantly they realized that the hotels would be cheaper. Of course they didn't need two rooms. I'm sure she would have good insight.
You have an excellent memory! Yes, we did a wonderful road trip summer before last, and I can comment on a couple things:
Since you brought it up, we'll start with the RV thing. When we started talking about and saving for the trip, we began with the assumption that we'd rent an RV. However, as we began to investigate costs and options, we determined that staying in hotels was MUCH, MUCH cheaper for our family (admittedly, we're a family of four, so we were "easier" than your larger family). Here's why:
The cost of renting an RV is astronomical. It's been several years since I looked at the prices, but it was in the neighborhood of $1000/week, and then there were other costs associated with the RV: Gas mileage is much lower than anything else you could drive. We made this decision at the point that gas prices were going up and down rapidly, and people were saying that gas was going to be $5, 6, 7, 8 per gallon -- that didn't happen, of course, but the possibility of it did figure into our planning. Even though you're renting the RV, you're going to have to pay to park it in national parks, etc. You may park in "free spots" occasionally, but when you do that you're running on your generator, which will deplete itself -- the bottom line is that you're going to pay for a campground MOST nights. And anyway, the campground gives you access to a real shower, washer/dryers, maybe a pool -- you're going to pay for campgrounds IN ADDITION TO the already expensive RV rental. You'll have to pay to dump your waste. When you rent an RV, you're given X number of miles as a part of the rental, and if you exceed those miles you have to pay for those extra miles; when we figured up our expected mileage, it was going to add more than $1000 to our total. And there are cleaning fees when you return the RV.
When we totalled up the whole cost of an RV rental, we were flabbergasted -- we thought it was going to be a budget choice, but just the opposite was true. Keep in mind that we were looking at the RV only because we thought it was going to be easy and cheap. We found out that people who RV on a regular basis do it because they like the lifestyle: Going to a campground, stretching out for a few days, then moving on. It's not so practical for a moving-fast, seeing-things type of road trip.
Moving away from the cost of the RV, we foresaw a number of non-financial difficulties: Most of our trip consisted of wide open spaces -- national parks, etc. -- but we also spent some time in big cities like Denver, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas. My husband wasn't too excited about the idea of driving a big RV through those roads, but renting/pulling a small car behind the RV didn't sound appealing either. We were also concerned that with an RV as our ONLY transportation, it'd be difficult to run out to the grocery store in the evening to pick up sandwich fixings for the cooler. And an RV is a small space for everyone to share for a long trip. Many of the RV campgrounds where we would've stayed were located rather far from the things we wanted to visit -- we would've spent more hours driving.
We bickered, searched, and argued about the RV for months -- both of us WANTED it to work for us, though it became clear that it wasn't a good option for us -- and we held onto what we saw as the two big reasons to rent the RV: The ability to cook inexpensive meals, and the lack of packing up every day. But finally we had to conceed that those weren't really as valuable as we thought. First, we agreed that we wanted to keep a cooler full of simple foods and drinks, but we wanted to eat out once a day -- and given those facts, we really wouldn't have been cooking so much as just fixing sandwiches (which we could do perfectly well from the tailgate of an SUV). And while the RV would excuse us from packing up our suitcases each day, we'd have spent that time setting up the RV each evening (hooking up the electric and waste, leveling it, putting out the awning, chocking the wheels).
Eventually, we determined that we had to let go of the RV idea and search for other options. In the end, we went with hotels. Here's why:
We stayed mostly in Holiday Inn Express, Best Western, and Country Inns & Suites. These are not fancy hotels, but they're clean and safe, and they almost always provide a free breakfast. We love the free breakfast feature because it's a money-saver, and because it makes the morning so easy -- our teens could run downstairs to eat while we were dressing, then they could have the bathrom while we ate. Most of our hotel stays were in the $50-80 range; most of them were found on Priceline. I like to bid in the 2.5 star range; it gives you the "level" of hotel I mentioned above.
We spent about three years planning /saving for this trip, and during that time my husband saved all his business-travel hotel points for the trip. That gave us some hotel rooms for free, which was great!
In a few places, we just plain couldn't get a cheap room. And when we visited the national parks, we splurged on cabins inside the park -- we didn't have unlmited time, and we saw this as a good expenditure. Some of the cabins were over $200 a night, but we figured that it balanced out against the least expensive $35/night Priceline hotels, so it came out okay in the long run.
Again, leaving the financial side of things, hotels gave us the ability to occasionally stretch out into a suite and give everyone an evening of privacy, and to pile into one room in places where the prices were just too high. If we knew we'd be arriving at our hotel mid-afternoon, we'd opt for a larger room so we could enjoy some privacy -- if we knew we'd be going out to an evening attraction, we scrimped on a small room, knowing it'd just be used for sleeping and showering. It was nice not to be tied into one size place (or one size price) all the time. No matter what attraction we planned to see, we could always find a hotel nearby, so our drive time was reduced. We always had access to a washer/dryer, and we had plenty of clean towels (which I didn't have to wash) every evening. Giving our teens access to a pool and a TV every evening made everyone's time more pleasant.
We did make a reservation for every evening of the trip -- we didn't just "hope" we'd find an empty, inexpensive hotel along the way. I was satisfied with this choice. We planned our mileage very carefully and were never disappointed with our choices. Someone else might find this restrictive, but we didn't want to be stuck on the road with two sleepy, fussy teens.
So, that was OUR experience with the "RV vs. hotel" decision. Admittedly, your choices are more complicated because you have more people. Also, we saw our trip as a moving-fast-and-seeing-things type of vacation; if you're looking for an evenings-around-the-campfire-should-we-stay-here-one-more-day type of trip, your decision may be different. Hope our thought process will put you a little farther down the road towards a decision.
The one thing I'd advise you NOT to attempt is a half-way choice: Don't try to do half camping, half hotels. Why? Think about how much space you'll need for a tent, 7 sleeping bags, 7 pillows, linens, and more. You can't advocate that much of your very limited storage space to camping equipment . . . not if you're not using it all the time.
Other random thoughts:
Check out
www.roadtripamerica.com -- we used it a good bit in planning.
We bought the America The Beautiful pass at our first national park. It gives your whole family admission to national parks for one year from the date of purchase. Before you buy, do compare the cost carefully. The cost to get into some parks is $25/week, but realize that kids under 16 get in free anyway, and some parks don't charge admission (for example, the Jefferson National Expansion Monument charges for a lift to the top, and Mt. Rushmore charges only for parking), and some parks "share admission" (for example, if you pay your $25 for Yellowstone, you don't have to pay for its next-door neighbor Grand Tetons). We saved only $15 on our trip, BUT we used the pass again the following summer (juuuust under the one-year mark) on a different trip, and we lent it to a friend who used it at the Grand Canyon.
We brought a medium-sized cooler and always kept water and sodas ready. Out west in the summer you simply can't skimp on water, and this alone saved a fortune. Really, with the dry air out west, we'd come back from a little walk and each guzzle two water bottles straight down; I don't usually drink that much here at home. Also, at home we use refillable water bottles, but on our trip we opted to buy water bottles; we made a number of keep-healthy choices on the trip, and one of them was NOT to drink the local water here and there. We also kept sandwich-makings and fruit handy at all times. We ate many picnics, which saved us a great deal of money.
On a typical day, we had breakfast for free at the hotel, ate lunch from the cooler, and ate out a moderately nice dinner. We ate very little fast food. Occasionally we ate out for lunch and then ordered a pizza for dinner. We took advantage of all free food that came our way (for example, many of the hotels put out apples and cookies in the lobby in the evenings -- my youngest will eat 4-5 apples at a sitting, but I didn't allow her to take advantage of the hotel in that way). We didn't feel like we were skimping on food, and we were all satisfied. We did enjoy a few splurge meals here and there -- for example, we did the Cookout experiences at the Grand Canyon and at Yellowstone; those involved a train ride or a horseback ride out to a remote location.
Just like my husband "saved up" all his business travel hotel points, we saved all our credit card points for restaurant gift cards. In retrospect, this was a mistake. Here, where I live, there's a Friday's on every corner, an Olive Garden next to a Red Lobster every other mile . . . it's not like that out west! Most of our carefully hoarded gift cards came right back home with us, un-used. This wasn't a bad thing because we were able to use them here at home, but they weren't the money-savers we'd expected them to be.
On the subject of money, we planned the trip for about 3 years. Originally, we planned to leave from our home on the East coast and go all the way to the Pacific, making a big circle. We saved about $12,000 for this purpose and even bought my car with the intention that it'd be the road trip vehicle. Then life intervened -- you know, of course, that two years ago was a time when many, many people were being laid-off from their jobs. My husband was very afraid that if he was gone for five weeks, his company might well have said, "Just stay gone" . . . so with great reluctance, we cut out much of the Eastern portion of our trip (which is close enough anyway for shorter trips), and we made it into a fly-and-drive. We flew to Las Vegas and rented a car, the made a smaller-than-planned circle and returned to Las Vegas. We spent three weeks driving among the Western national parks, which are much too far for us to visit in a shorter vacation. While I was very sad to "lose" some of the destinations we'd chosen, it was still a wonderful trip. We spent about $4000 total, leaving plenty for a nice cruise the next summer, and we didn't feel that we scrimped on things that mattered to us. We stayed in clean, moderate hotels. We ate good food. We saw wonderful things. We didn't "do without" things that we wanted, but we did seek out the least expensive way to get those things.
Note: It's cheap to fly into Las Vegas, but they really stick you on the price of the rental car. Check BOTH before you determine your starting point.
Also, at the end of the three weeks, our teenagers were ready to come home. They'd had enough of riding in the car for hours at a stretch and enough "togetherness" with mom and dad. They enjoyed the trip, by we enjoyed it more. We know they don't love history as much as we do, so we put in plenty of things for them: Horseback rides, water parks, a buffalo safari, etc. Certain things were clearly "for" certain people -- for example, my engineer husband is the only one who really enjoyed visiting Hoover Dam -- while other things were clearly for all of us; for example, we all loved the rodeo and said we'd go regularly if we had them here. But we made sure that the kids had something "big" to look forward to constantly.
We each packed one small rolling suitcase, and we each had a small backpack for in-the-car-things. We each had 4 shorts-outfits, 1 pair of jeans, 1 pair of hiking boots, 1 pair of tennis shoes, and 1 pair of sandals. And pajamas and a swimsuit. A 40-degree cold snap in Yellowstone forced us to buy sweatshirts (in JULY!), but other than that we were satisfied with that small amount of clothing. I washed clothes every couple days.
We had the cooler and a plastic box for foods like chips and bread. When we stopped at the hotels, it was easy for us each to grab our own suitcase, and then 1-2 people would go back to the car for the foodstuff. We had no trouble getting ice for the cooler at the hotels; the only time we paid for ice was in Yellowstone.
I kept a small first-aid kit with bandaids, asprin and motion-sickness pills in my backpack. With all the hiking we did, we used a good number of the bandaids.
If I had to do it again, I would have everyone pack in medium-size duffle bags instead, and I'd have a 5th big bag for laundry. It would've made shoving everything into the back of the SUV a little easier.
I made a big notebook before we left, which had all sections for maps, hotel reservations, tickets/admission information, and financial info. I put a great deal of effort into the plans, and it paid off.
So, that's what I can say right now. If you have specific questions, please ask!
