General bumming around cost between walks and climbs cost?

Short answer you need a bigger daily allowance. What do you think you are going to spend on a van?

My drive though breakfast was $4 without a beverage after I put $54 in fuel in the Subaru this morning.

That was me, 30 years ago.  Taking 4-5 months a year off, driving around, mostly in North America, camping, hiking, backpacking, and sleeping in the car.  Collectively, that’s a few years on the road so I have a lot of thoughts.

$250/week + fuel is easy.  Half that is doable.

Buy all food at grocery stores, don’t eat out.

I buy fruits and veggies I can eat raw and canned foods (or $1 Pasta Sides of Rice Sides at Walmart) I can heat up easily.

If you want hot food, fire up your stove.

Take sponge baths in restrooms.  Fill a liter bottle with warm water, go into a stall, and scrub up.  If it’s a single-occupancy restroom, lock the door and go to town.  Strip down completely, clean everything, wash your hair in the sink, etc.  Clean up really well after yourself.

I-80 and south, McDonalds’ have multi-person restroom.  North of I-80 and along I-90, McDonalds’ have single-person restrooms which allow that more thorough cleaning.

A reliable van is going to cost more than a reliable compact car.  And a compact car will use 1/3 to 1/2 as much fuel as a van.  I sleep well in a compact car if I bring a full-sized pillow and recline the front seat.  I have a speech rehearsed, “I’m sorry officer, I got tired while driving and felt I should sleep a few hours before continuing.”  No one is going to cite you for that and the only time I had to use it, he only told me to move another 5 miles down the road and use a parking lot there.  Lots of folks sleep in Walmart parking lots in cars, vans and campers.  Just park around the perimeter – don’t take the prime spots.

Rest areas are for just that.  They say “No overnight stays” but that’s only so they can cite people who are camped out for the duration.  A single night, spent in your vehicle is never a problem.

Trailheads can be a nice place to camp in the car.  If someone hassles you, you say you got in late at night to start hiking the next morning.  You could sleep one night in your vehicle, take a long day hike, and sleep another night in the vehicle.

Big-city universities now require ID to enter their gym, pool, etc, but in more rural areas, often anyone looking like a college student with a book bag, can wander into the gym.  However, your book bag has a towel, soap, and change of clothes.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was right – don’t forget your towel.  Yeah, your backpacking towel, but also a nice big cotton towel for the car camping / college gym portions of the trip.

Youth Hostels aren’t as close to each other as they are throughout Europe or even in the NE USA, but they are less expensive than any hotel and a great place to connect with other adventurous travelers to share hikes, carpools and fuel expenses with.

WWOOF’ing (work on farm) and Workaway are options.  A friend here in Alaska has hosted multiple groups (he’s a dog musher so there’s always poop to scoop and wood to stack).  I’ve housed some of his overflow.  You work a few hours in the morning in exchange for room and board and (sometimes) working interactions with locals.  Look for references and reviews – a very few hosts abuse the concept, but most are great experiences.

Look into couchsurfing.org  I’ve got friends that have travelled a lot of places, with no lodging costs, and met lots of interesting people.  If that appeals to you, consider hosting a few people before you leave home – then you build some cred and reviews before you ask others to host you and you learn the social etiquette and norms.

If you post more specifics about where and when you’re thinking of, I could offer more detailed ideas.  Also, you’re welcome to PM about air/land transport.  I’ve flown over a million miles around US/Canada and driven a lot more than that and have learned a few tricks how to do it cheaply, free, and/or get paid to move around North America.  Sometimes opportunities arise like someone needs a vehicle moved from here to there that could save you even having to buy a vehicle at all.

And I might have a few ideas and connections for the Alaska portion of your trip.

Well Ken around $2k for a small van or station wagon with a few miles left in it. I can buy something like that here in Australia and cars are so much cheaper in the USA for clunkers. It won’t need to be pretty just semi reliable and big enough to stretch out in I see plenty on Craigs list like that. I have been told to buy in the desert states because of the casual attitude to registration and insurance rather than in New York State where the wifes family live

If you follow Dave’s advice about washing up in a Single Occupancy rest room don’t dawdle please.

Have some pity on the old man with prostate problems waiting outside the door for you to finish.

He has to pee really bad.

Larry S

You mean winter in the N. Hemisphere? It is very cold and dark in Canada and Alaska. Even Utah is quite frozen.

Hi Larry you fellow old man Prostate aware bloke here and Erica you can’t ski in summer so “Yes” the Northern winter

1) Fly into Las Vegas, always one of the cheaper tickets. 2) Buy and licence your car/van in Montana, 0% state sales tax. Check now to see what kind of paperwork you will need to do this. 3) Look into US Forest Service areas for cheap, primitive camping. National Parks and State Parks can get very crowded and very expensive.

David has thrown out a good number of leads.

Happy planning, and keep us in the loop!

I can’t fly into Las Vegas direct from Australia, the cheapest tickets are into LAX I hate LAX

Next cheapest is Vancouver although I’d have to leave from Sydney for that. Yes thanx for that and I will check all the paperwork needed

For domestic flights, Las Vegas does has some cheap fares but isn’t operated as a hub by any airlines I know of.  i.e. you can make connections there, but the layover may multiple hours instead of 60-100 minutes for an airline’s hub cities.

LAX is easy to hate the first 10 times you’re through there.  It’s grown on me over the years as I’ve learned how to get from one terminal to another without exiting security and know which transfers require those stupid bus rides from one terminal to another let’s you plan a long connection time and to expect that bother instead of getting upset about a surprising hiccup.  And then there’s US custom/immigration.  If you land in a 737 from Mexico when other planes haven’t, it can go pretty quick.  If you arrive on a A-380 when several other wide bodies came in from Asia, it can be 3-4 hours.  I still don’t love LAX like I do ANC, LAS, and PDX, but I’ve come to hate it less, following those guidelines.  Oh, and Uber/Lyft is a LOT better than a cab from LAX, but that’s true almost anywhere.

Friends from Alaska bought and sold several mini RVs during a year spent in NZ and Oz. They were buying/selling vehicles more specific to sleeping/cooking and usually from other, similar travelers.  I’ll ask them if they used any particular app for that.

There are also peer-to-peer car rental apps like Turo that are cheaper than rental car companies and off-app offerings on Craigslist, etc.   That could avoid hassles at the Dept of Motor Vehicles trying to get a vehicle registered in your name, proof of insurance, etc.  As a poor student, sometimes I’d drive vehicles that had current tags on the plates, but it wasn’t registered to me, and aspire not to get pulled over.

If you travel through WA, give me a shout. If I’m around you’re welcome to crash at my place for a day or two to reset before heading further north.

really good advice from David, as always.

My wife and I bought a 2006 Ford e350  last year for $4000, and put another $1500 into it to take it fully up to speed.  (New batteries, tires, and tidying a few things up in the engine.)  I had 94000 miles on it, and we should be able to sell it for just about what we paid for it.  That might be a better option than buying something really, really cheap.

Last year we spent a month traveling around the parks in Utah–from California to Colorado and just about everything in between.  We ate out sometimes.  Sometimes we ate ramen for dinner.  We only stayed at a hotel once in the month–but that shower was transcendent!

And I think we spent a total of about $2500 for the month for the two of us.  We could have scrimped A LOT more.  And if you do some hiking and backpacking, you’ll cut down on some of your lodging expenses, clearly.  We were fighting a few nagging injuries, so we couldn’t do that, but we paid $6-12 a night for a campground.  We’re seniors, so double that.  Food?  You should be able to eat $25-30 a day and still eat reasonably well.  That’s oatmeal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, ramen and a salad for dinner, and all the fruit you can eat.  And a few cookies and chips.

The big expense is fuel.  At $3 a gallon, the more you drive, the more you spend.

Oops.  I left out one cost that you will have:  entrance fees to all the parks.  Did I mention we’re seniors?  We get in for free with our lifetime pass…..

Does 70 YO count as a senior ?

But I believe the discounts only apply to residents so not really applicable perhaps?

Thanx for all the advice and the offers. It seems as if my bigger problem is insurance not buying a cheap but reliable car.