I keep feeling like every time I post I sound cheaper and cheaper.

This is how we save on restaurants, hotels and airfare. We don't take any. We car pool up to a camp site with tents and canoes and spend a week with a group of friends, eating camp food out of coolers, portaging, canoeing, and living in tents. We have so much fun! Yet at the end of the week we are all so tired, hungry, and dirty, that getting back to our house makes it seam like a holiday for the rest of the year. The memories last a lifetime! It's cheap and environmentally friendly.

__________________

I was thinking the same thing. Me being cheap not u. we do alot of camping although since I'm not a camping girl I would really like to take a regualr vacation.

allgirls

__________________
allgirls, mom to 3 girls

It's Girl Scout Cookie Time

When driving, instead of stopping at a fast food restaurant, stop at a WalMart or large supercenter store (Super Target, for instance). There is plenty of space for getting out and walking around and you can pick up a few grocery items then the same hamburger / hot dog / chicken nugget selection at fast food restaurants.

Hotel rooms are awfully expensive and not very spacious, especially if you have more than a couple of kids. Look into renting a cabin. We do the Kabin Lodges at KOA campgrounds. This is a nice option over tent camping - just a pillow and blankets to pack. Many B&Bs have cabin options, too. The fact that a kitchen comes with the package helps a lot. We try to make only one meal of the day an eat-out meal. Most of the time we eat-out only for lunch (it is cheaper, too). We keep breakfast and dinner very simple. Frankly, because lunch is so much food, dinner ends up being very small. We also keep tons of snacks, water, misc food in the car or hotel room / cabin. If you want really, really inexpensive lodging look into staying at youth hostels.

I highly recommend UNDER packing. I have a girlfriend who brings the kitchen sink along when she goes on a car trip. The kids have every toy imaginable. My kid travels with a pair of binocculars. We MIGHT pick up a new workbook and a box of crayons for her at one of those WalMart stops. Other than that we sing along to the CDs, make up road games, talk or just watch the scenery. We underpack clothing, too. The only time I brought more clothing was when DD was potty training. My point is ... entertain yourself with the TRAVEL. Don't try to duplicate your at-home experience. When we travel we check out geocaching locations. We search out penny-press machines which is our form of a souvenir. We do as many cheap / free activities as we can find - local parks, free days at the museums, free factory tours, etc. We try to live like the locals, not like we live at home.

For airfare and travel deals, I signed up for e-mail alerts from all the travel sites I could think of ... Frommers being one of the best. Sign up for e-mail alerts from the airlines that service your local airport, too. Include Southwest. Also sign up for e-mail alerts from services that specialize in an area that you want to go. For instance, we get e-mails from a Hawaii and Disneyland service.

__________________
"Poor people work for their money. Rich people make their money work for them."