Wanderus – Travel Tips for the Traveling Wanderlust

After a 4 day road trip through the beautiful and colorful state of Utah, I’m back! Our trip went something like this: drive 6 hours, attempt sleeping in a teepee only to realize it’s warmer to sleep in a car, hike through muddy hoodoos, hike a mountain, drive through natural “monuments” at sunset, star-gazing in pitch black darkness, trek through red rock canyons and pass out from exhaustion.  For four days, we did a TON and it was incredibly cheap! We went into this trip knowing that we were going to be as cheap as humanly possible, but we still had a really great time! This is a highly recommended trip for families, active groups, and couples who are looking for a budget trip.

Ways to Stay Within Your Budgets:

1. Car Rentals: Everyday, I put a bid on a car on Priceline.com. Since you can only submit one bid per day (w/o changing anything), I started at $8 and worked my way up. Truthfully, I couldn’t get a super ridiculously cheap deal, so I ended up with Hotwire.com. My rental car was still only $15 per day! After taxes, it came up to be around $22. Not bad!

2. Food- Meals at the grocery store: Honestly, we didn’t have very high expectations for great food on this trip. Perhaps if we were in Salt Lake City it would’ve been different, but since we knew we would be on the road most of the time we went to the grocery store a lot. We ate a lot of beef jerkey, deli sliced turkey, baguettes, tomates, bananas, and water. Our best meal was at a Denny’s at the Arizona/Nevada border! Consider your destination and you can probably save some money going to the grocery store.

3. National Parks and Federal Recreation Land Pass- otherwise known as an annual pass for all the national parks in the US. It’s only $80 and it covers the cost of one car entry fee. I almost broke even and I’m pretty sure I”ll be hitting a few more national parks in the next few months! It was a no-brainer for me. $10 for Seniors.

4. Request an economy car: Enterprise tried to hand me off an SUV despite the fact that I requested an economy car when I made the reservation. I insisted that they honor the reservation and waited for a economy car. After 2 hours, I decided to ask them to throw in some sort of freebie for the inconvenience. Initially, the rep refused and I had made up my mind to call corporate to file a complaint. However, he came around and threw in half a tank of gas for free. Lesson of the story? Don’t be scared to ask.  We saved $20 for the half tank of gas and $100+ for the extra gas we would have paid if we accepted the SUV.

Locations: Bryce National Park, Zion National Park, Arches National Park, Natural Bridges

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