Road trip on a budget: Camping and long drives with kids for 3,000 miles cross-country

Road trip on a budget: 3,000 miles over 10 days

MARION, Mass. — With one set of grandparents on the West Coast and one on the East, my kids have seen the USA from the window of an airplane plenty of times.

This summer, we tried a lower-budget approach to our annual pilgrimage from Idaho to Massachusetts. We crossed the continent on our minivan, sleeping in campgrounds, picnicking at meals.

It did save money. Flying between Boise and Providence, R.I., and then renting a car for the six weeks we needed to be in New England, would have set us back about $1,200 for plane tickets and another $1,200 for an economy rental car — a total of $2,400.

With gas at about $2.60 a gallon, driving about 3,000 miles to New England in our 20-mpg Honda Odyssey cost us about $390 in gas. We aim to spend about the same amount on food as we would at home. Accommodation, of course, is all added cost; we spent $320 on that as well driving out. (While in New England, we’ll stay with friends and family.) And we still have to drive back in August; assuming the same costs, the trip will end up setting us back about $1,400 for gas and lodging.

In all, we’ll spend about $1,000 less on the road trip both ways than if we’d flown and rented a car. Depending on your budget, the savings might or might not be worth the tradeoff in time. In our case, we had fun along the way. And we gained some unexpected wisdom and insight from our nine days together. Here’s a summary, contrasting expectations with reality.

DRIVING: THE PLAN

Our pre-trip planning led us to Route 2, the secondary road that winds across the northern tier of the United States. Staying off major highways, we reasoned, would help us avoid trucks and give us a glimpse of the real towns, businesses, farms and homes that make up our country. We estimated that we would need to drive about 300 miles each day to make it to southeastern Massachusetts within 10 days.

DRIVING: THE REALITY

No sooner had we left Idaho than we abandoned Route 2, detouring to stay with an old friend who now lives in Deer Lodge, Mont. After that, we planned our route from day to day. Sometimes we took major highways; mostly we motored down the secondary roads. In unpopulated areas, you can travel those roads at 65 mph.

CAMPING: THE PLAN

Accommodation would have made the trip more expensive than flying, so we planned to camp every night. We took as a guide the midsize Rand McNally Road Atlas of the United States, Canada and Mexico, which shows campsites on its state maps.

CAMPING: THE REALITY

The atlas came in very handy, but some of the places we ended up camping in were state and city parks where we landed by chance after seeing a roadside sign.

Some sites — such as Montana’s secluded Custer National Forest — were free. Others — such as the large, verdant Hok-Si-La park in Lake City, Minn. — cost more than $20 but came with a serene lakeside site and near-total privacy. We ended up spending $220 on two nights in motels, one in Watertown, S.D., where we were attracted by a Holiday Inn’s spectacular indoor waterslide; and one in Chicago, where we spent $120 in a downtown Doubletree.

Some campsites these days have free Wi-Fi. But not the ones we stayed at. We were among the last people on the planet to learn Michael Jackson had died.

FOOD: THE PLAN

In the spirit of experiencing the places we were passing through, we planned to avoid big box stores and large national chains. We hoped to eat well at farmstands and local grocery stores without losing our shirts.

FOOD: THE REALITY

Turns out you can’t avoid big box stores and large national chains. We did fine in the most unpopulated regions — towns like lovely Faith, S.D., where the local grocery store is the only game for miles around. But even in medium-sized towns, all roads led to a Wal-Mart, where we could buy pillow-sized bags of pre-washed salad mixes (croutons included) and things like ready-to-eat ham steaks that were easily heated to perfection on our metal two-burner gas stove. With French bread, this made for a delicious dinner, and campsite clean-up was a snap.

We always carried a supply of hardy fruit, such as apples and oranges, and peanut butter and jelly. Breakfast was boxed cereal and milk from our cooler. The kids tolerated the Spartan fare on this journey with few complaints.

ATTRACTIONS: THE PLAN

As a family, we came up with two must-see attractions: The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

ATTRACTIONS: THE REALITY

It turns out all roads — even deserted-looking ones — are paved with tourist destinations. Historic homes and farms, miniature golf courses, specialty food producers, wineries, boat rides, horse rides, zip lines, and “museums” of every size and description vie for the attention of families with restless kids. By Day 2 of the trip we had learned to ignore the cries of interest from the backseat and press on.

That doesn’t mean we sailed through without ever stopping for anything other than sleep, food or bathrooms. In Montana, we stopped at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, which has an extensive graveyard and exhibits providing context for the 1876 battle that killed Lt. Col. George Custer and hundreds of U.S. soldiers. The park is $10 per carload; www.nps.gov/libi/.

While we were at the monument, reenactors were pulling in for upcoming anniversary events. Soldiers and Indians dined together at large tables in a local cafe. They were happy to chat with the kids and pose for photos.

At a lunch break in Faith, S.D., we wandered into a local rodeo and spent some time in the stands. Friendly locals explained what was going on in the arena.

In Wisconsin we stopped at Taliesin, the home of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Home tours, at $47 a person, were too rich for our budget. But a Wright-designed visitor center offers a glimpse of the architect’s inspiration and some history; www.taliesinpreservation.org/.

Nearby, we happened upon the spacious — and free — Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; www.mmoca.org/. In Chicago, we fulfilled our wish to visit the Art Institute — www.artic.edu/aic/, free on Thursday evenings — which came with the unexpected benefit of Grant Park right next door. Here huge fountains cooled off hundreds of joyful kids (including mine). Grant Park also features The Bean, a giant stainless-steel sculpture that provides a panoramic, if rounded, reflection of the city — or, depending on where you stand, your family.

In New York, we made it to the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum, web.baseballhalloffame.org/index.jsp, along with an unexpected hit: The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, and its close-up glassblowing demonstration, www.cmog.org/. The huge gift shop of glass and CorningWare is an experience itself — a place where if you’re not paying attention, you might happen to see your 9-year-old manhandling a $44,000 glass egg.

Corning was also home to Thali of India, a downtown restaurant that proved to be the culinary highlight of the journey. An excellent lunch buffet with dessert for our two adults and two kids, ages 9 and 10, set us back $21 (28 E. Market St., 607-936-1900).

KIDS: THE PLAN

We weren’t sure how the kids would take to being in a car six to eight hours each day. I bought a dozen kids’ movies at a Boise pawn shop, which they watched on a portable DVD player. We planned stops that would enable them to run around.

KIDS: THE REALITY

Busy as they are with homework and sports, the kids just don’t have time at home to experience the kind of multi-hour movie hypnosis that so many parents had growing up in the 1970s. While my daughter occasionally took off the headphones to play Mad Libs with us or read, my son was in heaven. He couldn’t wait to get in the car. From time to time he did take note of the wildflowers, cattle, and antelope. He saw the cornfields and farms and small towns. He asked a lot of questions about farm equipment. But the movies made the kids’ experience a snap.

As for what they’ll remember most from this trip, it’s probably not what we will. They kids liked the bold campsite raccoons (which we have at home) and the swimming pools we found along the way. They liked cooking al fresco and having their parents around without the distraction of phones, friends or computers.

And we liked the luxury of having time to talk together at length for the first time in years. We got to play our music, too. As we approached our destinations each day, the family generally regrouped. The headphones came off; together we looked for signs we were going in the right direction.