Arizona Cost Break Down

As we are preparing for our full timing adventure (as we have heard from many people, RVing is not a vacation, it’s an adventure.) we are trying to figure out what our budget needs to be while on the road. In our last 10-day outing in southern Arizona, we kept track of what and how much we spent our money on to get an idea of what we can expect on the road in the future. We did not conscientiously try to budget ourselves so we can get a better idea of what our comfort level would be.

Home again after a 10-day Arizona trip.

Since we are sharing our adventures with all of our dear readers, we are also going to share with you the breakdown of our costs to give you a better idea of what to expect if YOU were to go on a trip like this. We have divided our costs into the following categories:

1. Gas and travel
2. Lodging and camping
3. Meals
4. Groceries
5. Entertainment
6. Shopping

Gas and Travel

We are fortunate to be traveling during a time when gas prices are falling. A month ago when we visiting Lake Isabella, gas prices were nearly double what we paid in this last Arizona trip. Although prices are now cheaper, they obviously may not stay that way. To give you an idea of what gas will cost, it’s best to also show the number of miles traveled. The less you drive, the less gas you will use. Also if you drive without the Airstream attached, you will also see a reduction in the cost of fuel. Careful planning of your campsites so you can drive to other places for day trips becomes crucial. Also it is much easier to not have to setup and breakdown the camp all the time.

Gas prices at Tucson, AZ. The prices got even lower towards the end of our trip to below $1.60 a gallon for regular unleaded at some places.

In the 10 day trip, we traveled approximately 1650 miles. Roughly 1300 of those were with the trailer. We spend a total of $291.89 on diesel gas. That averages out to about $.18 a mile. The van averages about 15-18 miles per gallon of diesel alone and between 10-13 when towing. That brings our average cost per gallon to roughly $2.50.

Total: $291.89

Lodging and Camping

We spend 8 nights in the Airstream during this trip with one of those nights boondocking at the Wal-Mart parking lot during our transit to Phoenix on the way to Tucson. The first 3 days spent at Catalina State Park cost us 20 dollars a night. The next 3 nights were spend at The Shady Dell in Bisbee at $30 a night. The final night spent on this trip was in Gila Bend’s Augie’s Quail Trail RV Park at $25 for one night. Since we are Auto Club members, we received a $2 discount in Gila Bend but for the sake of simplicity, the costs per night is just about $25. That comes out to $175 we spend camping for 7 days. I thing this is probably pretty representative of what we can expect to see as we hit the road. Privately owned sites like the KOA we stayed at in Lake Isabella will be a little more expensive but will offer more amenities while state or federal owned campgrounds will be more modest. The only difference from when we are full timing is we are going to try to spend more than 3 days in places we like so we can have a couple of days just relaxing and hanging out instead of filling it up with site seeing.

Total: $175.00

Meals

One of the areas we will try to save on expenses is meals. Since the Airstream is self-contained with a full galley, we will be cooking more in and eating out less in the future. It is actually something we really enjoyed doing during this trip but it is hard to resist trying the local cuisine when you are at a new place. Of the 30 meals in a 10 day trip, we ate out 12 times. That’s 40% of all meals. Some of them you can’t avoid because you are in transit but sometimes we are just lazy and didn’t want to cook. The meal costs ended up at $300.76. About 1/2 of the meals where fast food and chain restaurants while the other are local restaurants. The local restaurants were some of the best meals we’ve had and we look forward to keep some of our budget for them while cutting back from chains and eating more good old home cooking in Mali Mish.

Total: $300.76

Groceries

During the 10 days on our trip, we cooked in the Airstream about half of the time. We skipped a couple of breakfasts and was invited to a fellow Airstreamer‘s house for Thanksgiving leftovers in Tucson. Not including the food we cleared out of our pantry at home to bring with us, we spent another $113.14 at grocery stores. This number is likely to grow a bit if we decided to eat in more and eat out less.

Total: $113.14

Entertainment

We spend $101.90 as tourists visiting museums, state parks and local attractions on this trip. There are always things to see and do at your destination of choice that doesn’t cost anything like the beach, the woods or maybe even the library or window shopping at the mall (ughh..). We have been to Tucson in the past and regreted not going to some of the places we’d wanted to go like the Bird Cage Theater in Tombstone so we made up for it this time around. We also went back to some of our favorite places since Ava is now a little older and would enjoy more of our visits. We do plan on cutting this area a little bit too as full timers mainly because we decided to have more time to just hang out and not try to keep our schedule so full.

Total: $101.90

Shopping

So this is really the area where you can eliminate altogether if you are on a budget. But you really have to try hard. As we visit new places, it is really hard to not buy something as a souvenir to remember it by. Bu the fact that we have so many photos as well as this blog to help us remember our visits, we were able to keep this down. We only bought a few souvenirs on this trip. One of them was a stuffed prarie dog doll at the Desert Museum near Tucson. It is actually a back up for one we already bought for Ava on our last trip that she now clutches in her arm when she sleeps. We decided that we could not risk the chance of it going missing and having a hysterical toddler at bedtime. This was a bargain at $5 from the gift shop. The other ones was a $3 candle at the San Xavier Del Bac Mission and a  $10 Tombstone keychain at the Bird Cage Theater Gift Shop.

Total: $18.00

Trip Total: $1000.69

We got away with just over a grand for our first 10-day trip which will give us an average annual budget of roughly $37,500. Of course that’s not including car maintenance, health insurance and all of that other overhead. We are probably looking at closer to $50,000 for us to be out and about comfortably for a year. If we really kept and eye on our expenses, we can probably shave 20% to 25% off by driving less, eating in and finding cheap entertainment. That’s if gas prices don’t start creeping back up towards $5/gallon in the near future. I guess I will have to be a fool to really believe that. Well, here’s to wishful thinking. I’ll keep you updated on how that goes.

over and out,
dan