Earlier this summer, my boyfriend Austin and I took a two-week road trip through South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. The first week of our trip was spent camping at various places and the second week was split between time with my family in Montana and Austin’s family in North Dakota. While time spent lodging with our families was free of charge (thank you, you guys are the best), the first week of our trip was funded by Austin and myself.

We discovered that there are a lot of easy ways to save money and travel inexpensively. This road trip allowed us to stay within our budget while exploring beautiful places in our country that we had never seen before! We ended up purchasing an annual pass to the US National Parks and are planning to go on more inexpensive adventures soon. If you are planning a trip, here are some helpful tips for saving money while you travel!

Quick side note, I have an amazon page here with a ton of camping item suggestions if you want to check it out. I will be posting a more complete packing list soon, but for now, some of the items I talk about in this post (and more) can be found on my amazon page.

What is Worth the Investment

First off, here are some things that are inarguably worth investing in before you leave because they either

1. 1. Help you save money in the long run or
   2. They are necessary for traveling.

Sometimes there is no way around spending some money, so here are the things that are worth your while:

• Tent
  • A tent allows you to camp (duh), which is much cheaper than staying in a hotel. Most of the campsites we stayed at were $30 a night. Campsites often have nice bathrooms, water and gas fill-up stations, and beautiful nature views! It’s not that bad, I promise. Plus, all you need to do at your campsite is sleep. You can spend the rest of the day out exploring. Linked here is the tent that Austin bought last summer if you want to check it out. The setup was super quick and convenient.
  • Tip: If you are feeling adventurous and are comfortable without modern amenities such as running water or toilets, there are many locations in national/state parks that you can set up a tent for free.
  • Second Tip: If your campsite doesn’t have a good bathroom setup, check out different, nicer, campsites OR stop in gas stations to brush your teeth, wash your face, etc.

• Grill
  • A grill was one of the best purchases we made before the trip! It allowed us to cook all of our own meals and eventually saved us a lot of money on food. Click here for the grill we used, it was so portable and worked great for every meal we prepared. We also used it to boil water for tea and coffee!

• A High-Quality Cooler
  • We were lucky enough to borrow an Ozark Trail cooler from Austin’s family, click here to check that out. There is an abundance of other brands of coolers that also work well over extended periods of time. I found an article you can check out by clicking here if you are interested, it compares a ton of different cooler brands.
  • Having a high-quality cooler saved us money in the long run. We saved a lot of money on ice by having a cooler that keeps ice frozen. We filled up the cooler with ice the day we left and only had to buy ice two more times throughout our two-week trip. We also were able to pack groceries in bulk which allowed us to cook our own meals and buy groceries in non-touristy places (the prices for everything gets so inflated near tourist locations such as Yellowstone or the Grand Tetons).
  • Tip: Keep the ice inside of the bag you buy it in. This keeps everything from getting soggy and wet when the ice eventually melts.

• Pour Over Coffee Maker
  • If you are like Austin and me, coffee is an essential part of every morning. Our pour over coffee maker saved us a lot of money on our morning coffee. Click here for the exact pour over we purchased, or here for a similarly priced Amazon version!

• Insulated Sleeping Pad
  • An insulated sleeping pad is something Austin and I regretted not having during our trip. We slept on an inflatable mattress that was somewhat inconvenient to fill with air each night and consistently deflated by early morning. The ground was also quite chilly at night, something an insulated sleeping pad would combat. We both decided that for our next trip, an insulated sleeping pad like this would be nice.

• Bear Spray
  • If you are headed into bear country, which is something I highly recommend researching before you set out on your camping experience, then you really should travel with a can of bear spray. It’s around $40 typically, which isn’t awesome. But hey it’s a lot better than being attacked by a giant grizzly bear! Here is the “top-rated” bear spray on Amazon.

Where You Can Save Money

Now that we have covered the necessary investments, let’s get into the money-saving tips you all came here for. To start with the most obvious money-saving tips, traveling in a car instead of a plane and sleeping in a tent instead of hotels is going to significantly cut your traveling expenses. In addition:

• Make Your Own Meals
  • Eating out is far more expensive than making your own meals. Making your own meals on the road will save you a lot of money in the long run, especially when considering the inflation of restaurant prices in popular tourist spots. Pack all refrigerated items in your cooler (an essential investment previously mentioned in this post) and buy freezer items, such as meat, as needed at grocery stores and gas stations. Eat your packed food as often as possible to avoid waste 🙂
  • Tip: Find an awesome lookout and set up your cooking station. Austin and I had some of our best meals when we cooked for ourselves in front of a fantastic landscape.