After yesterday’s silly post, this one is a bit more serious. I blame the cough medicine! Ha! Ha! Ha!
I know many people are curious how much it would cost to quit your job and load up into a truck pulling an RV and drive 4,780 miles in one month. We’ve been keeping track of our expenses so that we can share it on the blog today. As you know, we left Texas on June 1st and made it to Bismarck on June 3rd to meet up with my parents. That takes a lot of gas in a short amount of time!
GAS – $1,170
We covered 4,780 miles in one month. We probably won’t drive this many miles in 30 days again. Now that we are in Alaska, we are staying several days in each notable town. Our cheapest gas ($1.99 a gallon) was purchased at Buc-ees in Fort Worth the day we left home. Our most expensive gas ($4.03 a gallon) was purchased in Beaver Creek, Yukon, Canada, just before we crossed the Alaskan border.
CAMPGROUNDS – $1,097
Even though the Walmart parking lots are free, we opted for full hook ups with pull throughs whenever possible. Picking no hookups or back-in sites could have saved some money, but we were staying many places for a single night and enjoyed the option of being able to keep the trailer on the hitch. It saves time and effort when you have to get on the road in the morning, many times in the rain.
This is definitely the biggest expense because it includes electric and water that we use daily. Some campgrounds provided free internet and cable as well. We only had to turn on the propane furnace a couple of times and used electric space heaters for keeping warm. Most nights, the temperature dipped down into the forties and fifties.
DINING – $728
This amount is our restaurant expenses. We adopted my parents’ method of eating bananas, crackers, protein bars, cereal, and beef jerky for breakfast and lunch. We eat snacks early in the day and pick a restaurant for dinner. Most dinners have been $12-$15 per plate for hamburgers, sandwiches, wraps, fish and chips, and chicken fingers. Some places were higher. Most of the time, the quality of the food didn’t meet up with the menu price. It has been the most disappointing area of the trip so far.
ENTERTAINMENT – $1,196
This category speaks for itself. We are not holding back on having fun! The boat tours and train rides are all part of the experience. Some have been better than others, but you can read my opinions on the blog as we continue to do things. I am excited to explore more areas of Alaska and see what the last frontier has to offer!
MISCELLANEOUS – $660
This amount covers our window replacement, grocery shopping, and other odds and ends we bought, including over the counter medication when we got sick.
We did not track our fixed costs like insurance, cell phones, truck or RV purchase prices, or storage of our belongings back home. That being said, the grand total for June was $4,851.