Gas Prices Got You Down?

Gas prices reached record highs this spring and summer, then dropped a little, and now they’re climbing again. What’s an RVer to do?

The day before we left Arizona on our trip on March 15th, we gassed up in town. Gas had zoomed up overnight from $2.89 to $3.02. “Oh well, what’s new” we asked ourselves? Our next tank of gas the following evening was purchased in California at a whopping $3.50, and it climbed steadily upward as we made our way northward to Washington. Before we would head back to Arizona in July, it had reached well over $4.00 per gallon, then on our last day of travel, July 17th, it reached the highest price ever recorded! Such is our luck every time we travel in the motorhome! As we pulled into our campsite back in AZ, local gas stations were already lowering their prices by a few cents.

But we learned long ago how to compensate for volatile gas prices. Our previous trip back from Washington happened over Labor Day weekend in 2005, and I guess you can all remember what happened. Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and gas shot up from $2.50 to over $3.00 per gallon overnight. Ouch! When we’re traveling in an RV and something like that happens, nothing is going to stop us from reaching our destination, especially if we’re in the north and it’s getting up into fall. We don’t do cold! Well, not intentionally! This was one time when we had to get back right away.

So how do we compensate when we have the luxury of being able to plan ahead? By traveling slowly and spreading our travel costs out. We plan to go as far as we feel comfortable traveling, which is usually decided by a set budget. Then we settle in for anywhere from a week up to a month. Rates for RV sites are always a little cheaper by the week, and usually quite a bit lower per month. We’ve also kept our overnight costs down by joining Passport America, which provides one-half price camping spots scattered across the country, and Escapees Club, which owns several parks around the country. We also belong to Thousand Trails and can stay in their parks for free for up to two weeks before we have to move on or start paying. Unfortunately, these campgrounds are not always located on the routes we want to travel, but sometimes they are. And sometimes we route our trip specifically to take advantage of them.

Also, while traveling, we always watch for Walmart Supercenters, where there is room to park the motorhome to shop, and where grocery prices are generally lower than nearby chain supermarkets. We also watch for produce stands that we can pull into to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. Before we leave on a trip, I usually cook up some hearty soups and bread and freeze them in meal-size portions. Then we only have to find a spot off the highway big enough to pull over and run the generator for a few minutes to thaw and heat them for lunch.

One of our biggest expenses is eating out, which is both an educational and culinary treat as we travel through different regions, so if we need to cut back on expenses, that is often the only area we have to seriously cut.

So what are the best ways you can cut expenses to make up for expensive and rising gas prices?

1. Join a discount camping club so that you can cut costs of overnight stays. Make sure you talk to other campers before you join anything, and go back to your rig and figure out just how much you will actually save before signing on the dotted line. Salesman will tell you that you must make up your mind immediately to get their “special” price, but we’ve found that going back the next day hasn’t cooled their enthusiasm for selling us a membership. Meanwhile, we’ve been able to make an educated decision.

2. If you really can’t afford higher gas prices AND an overnight RV site, you might try bookdocking or dry camping. That means finding a place to park overnight for free, and with no hookups. Some county parks around the country provide free overnight camping, and some states allow overnighters to spend the night in rest areas, but always check first and make sure it looks safe. Some Walmarts also allow overnighters, but check with the manager before attempting it because you don’t want be awakened in the middle of the night by authorities threatening to haul you away because it’s illegal in that particular municipality.

3. If you use gas cards, make sure they aren’t for gas stations with the highest prices, and get one that offers a cash rebate. We’ve found that Sam’s Club gas prices are almost always cheaper than surrounding gas stations. You can purchase a Walmart Road Atlas and pay less for it at (guess where?) that lists all the Walmarts and Sam’s Club locations across the country.

4. Don’t leave home without signing up for emergency road service. We use Good Sam’s, which costs around $100 per year, and they will send a tow truck no matter how far you may be from civilization and haul you to the nearest reliable repair facility. There’s never any money out of pocket for this service.

5. Plan out your trip to fit your budget. If you want to travel for a few months, determine just how far you can afford to go each month, then find a nice but inexpensive place to put down roots for a short period. It’s a perfect way to really explore an area in your toad (towed car). Don’t haul one, or you travel with a trailer or a Fifth Wheel, and your only drivable vehicle is an expensive, fuel-guzzling truck? Then get together with some of your fellow campers and see if you can maybe join them on jaunts around the area, and split the fuel costs.

6. If gas shoots sky high and you’re thousands of miles from home, it pays to have a Visa or Mastercard, or a savings account that you can access on the road for just this type of emergency. Believe me, that’s what’s saved our “can’t stand the cold” booties more than once! There also may be times when an equipment break-down breaks your budget, and you need that extra cushion to tide you over.

For most RVers, there’s no reason to panic about gas prices yet. We may hang up the keys when it reaches $5.00 a gallon, but until then, we plan to continue our journey along America’s backroads. Maybe we won’t travel as far each trip, or we’ll take longer to get to our destination, but we’re not letting fuel prices determine our RVing future just yet.

P.S. Don’t tell the oil companies, but we may take a trip back East in a couple of months. This time though, we plan to leave the motorhome parked on its site and take the car, which gets around 35 miles per gallon. Won’t that just upset the order of things for the gas stations along our route?