The trip log came home from the summer loop with a coffee ring on the cover, an aquarium wristband stuck to one page and a fat stack of receipts folded into the back. Last weekend I sat at the kitchen table with a calculator, a highlighter and Pickles lying on exactly the receipts I needed. Twelve nights away, about 2,300 miles with the camper behind us, one tire emergency and a total of $3,410.
Here's how the nights broke down: two in Ron and Linda's driveway in Ocala (one going, one coming home), four at Vogel State Park, two at Tallulah Gorge, one at a hotel in Chattanooga and three at Grayton Beach. That's nine nights in the pop-up, one in a hotel bed and two in my parents' guest room with the camper parked out front.
The line items
- Gas: $475. About 2,300 towing miles at roughly 15.5 mpg, with prices between $3.15 and $3.30 a gallon. GasBuddy helped us find stations with room to pull through.
- Campsites: $473. Vogel $214, Tallulah Gorge $108, Grayton Beach $151.
- Chattanooga hotel: $164. A nonrefundable rate, booked direct after I called about parking the camper.
- Tires and tow: $241. The tow near Tifton cost us $0 on our roadside plan. The $241 covered a replacement tire and a new spare, since the old spare turned out to be dry-rotted.
- Groceries: $690.
- Restaurants: $455.
- Attractions: $262. The Tennessee Aquarium was $142 of it. The rest was smaller fees and rentals spread across Georgia and Florida.
- Ice, propane and firewood: $96.
- Cat sitter: $180. Twelve visits from Isabela next door at $15 each. Pickles has filed no complaints.
- Misc and souvenirs: $374.
That's about $284 per night away, or $379 per night if I only count the nine nights we slept in the camper. Camp math is honest even when it isn't flattering.
Compared with last summer
Last June's Smokies and Savannah loop cost $2,940 for 11 nights, about $267 a night, in the dome tent with a cabin and a hotel night mixed in. So this year ran about $17 a night higher. Where the difference came from surprised me.
Lodging actually went down. Last year we paid $873 for campsites, the Townsend cabin and the Savannah hotel. This year campsites plus Chattanooga came to $637, mostly because the camper did the job of the $468 cabin we booked last year for laundry and showers in the middle of the trip. Gas went the other way, $475 against $360, which is what towing about 2,400 pounds does to a Pilot. Add the $241 from Tifton and the lodging savings were gone.
Groceries were $50 higher than last year, and even that number flatters us. The six freezer dinners we cooked before leaving came out of our regular June grocery money, so they aren't in the trip log. If I'm fair about it, the real food number is closer to $750.
The $374 I can mostly explain
Misc is the line that makes Dana raise one eyebrow. Going back through the receipts, it was Turnpike tolls (more with the camper's extra axle), two loads at a laundromat in Blairsville, new water shoes for Nico from a store near Grayton after the dunes ate his left one, two books from the aquarium gift shop for Maya, a sticker from Brasstown Bald, a gas station rain poncho bought in a downpour, and a long tail of small purchases I wrote down as "snacks/misc" at 9 p.m. by lantern light. About $60 of it I genuinely can't match to anything. I'm counting it anyway.
What I'd change
I'd cut restaurants by a third. We ate out more than planned because driving days ran long, and a $60 dinner at 7:30 p.m. is what happens when nobody wants to unpack the griddle. I'd also check the spare tire before leaving, which wouldn't have saved the $241 but would have saved us about three hours outside Tifton.
What I wouldn't change is the hotel night. Real showers, a breakfast nobody had to cook and a morning with nothing to level or crank was worth $164 to all four of us.
The trip log went back in the glove box this morning. We leave for Pennekamp this afternoon, and the next page is already labeled.
