I love talking about traveling with other people. I love helping people plan their road trips. I love giving advice on how to have a trip that’s great for you. So I’ve been super excited about this “fun day” – Plan A Solo Vacation Day!

When I first started thinking about this a month or two ago, I thought that I would do something in Maryland or close by. There is so much to do so close to me. I can even drive to the beach for the day. I love living in such a central location.

In January, I read a fantastic book of poetry, The Princess Saves Herself in this One* by Amanda Lovelace (This is an affiliate link to buy the book on Amazon. If you buy it, I will get a small percentage of what you buy and anything else you buy. I only share affiliate links to products I LOVE and have used/read myself). I loved this little book so much I started following her on Facebook and Instagram, which I don’t do often for authors.

Fast forward to me thinking about this trip and I happened to see a book signing event pop up for her new book! I thought, this is totally perfect! It will combine my love of reading AND driving.

When I start planning a trip, I look at things in the area to do, I do random searches to get an idea of what I’m looking at for price, I look at the Rocketmiles site for hotels that would give us bonus miles for our Southwest credit card. A new thing I’m adding into the mix is Govx. I found out about it through looking into tickets for a music festival. It was considerably cheaper than the normal tickets. They offer discounts for current and former military AND local, state, and federal government employees including first responders, fire fighters, police and more. The discounts are across the board, from travel to products, and more. I haven’t used them yet to get anything, but am thankful to have found them. They offer discounts for the Choice Hotels, The Wyndham hotel group and Omni Hotels & Resorts. As well as theme park discounts and more.

I will then look at how far away the destination is. At this point is when I try to figure out my budget and my goal(s) for the trip. How much can I spend on this? Do I want to stretch my money with cheaper lodging so I can stay more days? Or do I want to have an epic experience for less nights in a great location? I figure out what my MUST do’s are.

Then I start working through my spreadsheet (which you can get for free if you sign up for the Journey With The G’s email list) and seeing how I’m doing with what I want to do and how much I have to spend.

At this point, my bare minimum trip will be a drive to the signing the day of, doing some exploring in the area, and driving back. (I’ll try to do some Facebook Lives no matter what I do, so stay tuned.) We don’t really have any money set aside for this as it was a totally last minute idea I had. So at a minimum, I’m looking at the cost of gas, the cost of food, the cost of the book(s) I buy at the signing, and whatever fun little side adventures I find. Bret and I have decided that if we get money back on our taxes or if what we have to pay isn’t as high as what we’ve saved, then I can splurge for a bigger trip. So we’ll see how that all shakes out.

If you want help planning your epic road trip, check out my brief and helpful book – Planning an Epic Road Trip on any Budget. I use the same methods when planning my own trips.

Have you taken a trip by yourself? What was it like?

This guy was taken on one of my previous solo trips. 🙂

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