Wanna Know What it REALLY cost?

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The Mama Bus is HOME!

The last week was rough.

• It involved three hard days of driving in steady, cold, rain and relentless wind.
• It necessitated two route changes, one for road closures, one to avoid passing on the plague.
• It was marked by emergency roadside stops to empty vomit buckets
• The last two nights were spent in hotels instead of homes or camping to try to quarantine the infected.
• We resorted to movies played on laptops… yes, us… it’s our ultimate secret weapon and we went 51 days without any TV, so the kids loved it, and felt better.

We rolled into the Wood Family Farm in New Hampshire as tired and spent as we’ve been in a long time.

Ending the trip with ten days and nights of non-stop vomit and diarrhea was not part of the plan, but we survived.

It’s taken us four days to unpack, sleep hard and recover enough to do the math… and we still have some sick kids.

The results are as follows:

When we left NH we had, in our possession, $6200.00.

• There are 13 of us.
• We were gone 53 days.

The total amount spent on this trip was: $6149.76

That breaks down to:

• $473.00 per person.
• $116.00 per day.
• $8.93 per person, per day.

We’re pretty proud of that, but we could have done it cheaper.

• We stayed in a hotel 3 times, once at Grand Canyon when it was freezing cold & a particularly hard day, twice at the end for illness.
• The last night out we treated the kids to a cafeteria style dinner, that cost us $100, to celebrate.
• We did some “extras” like taking the big kids on a special tour at Carlsbad Caverns.
• We ordered pizza at Aunt Seana’s.

What does that not include?

• Souvenirs. The Millers collect patches for their jackets, the Woods pins for their wall hanging.
• Clothing. A few sweatshirts were procured for cold weather… but we’d have bought those at home too.

We’re pretty excited to have come in below budget. The extra money is going toward stove pipe for the Wood Farm and a few little housewares for the cottage the Millers will be renting on Cape Cod for the next few months.

Do you have questions for us about the trip, budgeting, or anything else? Ask away!! We’re happy to share what we’ve learned!