As you probably know by now, my husband and I spent the latter half of 2020 road tripping the states & visiting National Parks. We had a MAJOR learning curve at the beginning of our trip & probably could have saved us a lot of time & money had we known a few tricks. But we eventually learned and I am here to pass our knowledge on to you!
Map out your detours
I put this at the top of the list because knowing your detours will end up saving you a TON of money. It prevents backtracking or missing something you really wish you would have seen. We planned out our detours and road side attractions using the Road Trippers app!
Not only do you save money by taking the best/quickest route but you also need to do research on any fees and to make sure these attractions are open. We almost went 45 miles out of our way only to find out that the 4 Corners was closed due to COVID! Had we not planned ahead we would have wasted time and gas only to be turned away.
Gas Station Rewards
Sign up for every single gas station rewards program available! We thought we would be find using ones we already had but we quickly realized that you never know which gas stations will be available when you stop. So we ended up just signing up for all of them and would use rewards as they came in!
Some of them like 7-11 even have programs that when you first sign up you get a discount on gas for your first 3 fill ups! Others have rewards on food and drink which can also save you money in the long run on a road trip. No matter what the rewards program offers it ends up being worth it when driving across the country.
Hotel Rewards
As you may know we didn’t stay in many rewards. That being said, we made the most of rewards programs when we did! We checked all of our credit cards first to see if any of them had bonus points for hotels or travel discounts. Turns out we got 2% back when booking through hotels.com with our Venture card. Then we signed up for the Hotels rewards program which gives you one free night for every 10 stays.
So in the end we ended up getting bonus miles/cash back on our credit card and we earned a free stay through the hotels.com reward program! You can definitely double up on rewards when traveling and this is a tip we use often. Not just during road trips.
Laundromat Promotions
We did majority of our laundry at laundromats and we definitely learned a lot about this process the longer we did it. Laundromats typically aren’t chains meaning that the rewards programs aren’t necessarily great for earning long time rewards to use later. BUT many of them offer a discount on your first wash which saves you money that same day!
We also learned to ask about cash discounts vs credit card prices. Or many were promoting the use of their apps and giving people who used the app a discounted rate! All of these things may only save you a dollar or two but it ads up when you are doing laundry every few days.
America The Beautiful
This is fantastic pass if you plan to road trip to any national parks or monuments! The America The Beautiful pass costs $80 and is good for one year. It gets you free entrance into all National Parks! It also gets you free or discounted entrance into some national monuments!
If you are camping in the national parks you may also get a discounted nightly rate using this pass. It was well worth the $80 and saved us so much money in the long run. We ended up going to way more parks and monuments than we had originally planned and one reason we were able to do this is because of this pass.
City Pass
If you are planning to stop and really go sightseeing in a city while on your road trip you need to at least look into some version of the City Pass. Any bundle deal on entrance to sightseeing locations will save you money. We have used this in many of our travels and never been disappointed.
Not only do City Passes save you money but you also usually get into a shorter line and don’t have the wait time that other tourists experience. Overall it makes the trip much more enjoyable and is worth the money. Just make sure to look for any restrictions and know for sure which attractions are available in the pass you purchase. They are all a little different so just understanding the details will make your overall experience much better.
Free Entrance Days
Okay this is sometimes harder to accommodate when on a flexible road trip but this is why planning ahead can save you so much money. Many museums do some version of a First Friday deal in which on the first Friday (or whatever day the city chooses) all entrance fees to museums are waved from 6-9pm. Obviously the details vary city to city but always check to see if they have anything like this going on while you plan to be there visiting!
