Eight years ago, we were drowning in debt, I was working a job that was not the right fit for me, I was struggling to build a photography business, and I really wanted to travel. It was the second Christmas Bret and I were married and we were hoping to visit his family in California. We had flown the year before, and friends, as I’ve written before, flying to California is a LOT during the holidays. I’m so thankful for Southwest and our many free/cheap flights over the years, but I hadn’t discovered this magic yet. When we started to do the math, and look at the time off we could both get, we realized that driving might be an option. It turns out that it was really affordable to drive across the country instead of flying. There is the time factor, you have to take off work (thus not make money, unless you get vacation time) and spend days in a car. But we did it, only stopped at a few hotels, and got our visit.

Here’s the thing though, we got to take a cross country trip! We did something together that people sometimes only dream about. To us, it was a way to save money, to make it work with what we had. But as it turns out, we were able to see eight states on that trip. We were able to spend days together. We took a totally epic road trip.

We used this technique two more times for Christmas visits until Bret started a full time teaching job. It wasn’t until our 2016 summer road trip that I realized I had learned a really valuable skill – how to take an epic road trip on any budget. I learned so much the hard way (and some the easy way) that I could use to help others take an epic trip as well.

It seems to me that people don’t realize how easy and affordable it can be to take a road trip. I figured out a sample budget for a trip from Baltimore to the Grand Canyon for two people under $500! While I haven’t taken that exact trip myself, I have gotten coast to coast for under $500 in gas (for my 2016 trip…but that was not a straight coast to coast, ha ha, we went all over the place on that one!)

There’s one phrase that I hate to hear when I tell people about my cross country travels – “I’ve always wanted to do that.” It seems to be quickly followed by a “I can’t wait until I retire to do it” or “once I have XZY I’ll take it” or “every other excuse in the book.” I want to shake them and say, “don’t you understand? You CAN take an amazingly epic trip on any budget!” Coming from the experience of paying off a debt of over $30,000 , I know what it means to sacrifice to save. The hard work we put in to get out of that hole really prepared us to plan and save for the road trips we wanted to take.

So friends, listen, it IS possible to take a cross country road trip. You CAN take the trip. I have put together all my knowledge over the years into a book, it’s not long, you can probably read it in one sitting. It will help you plan YOUR epic road trip, so you can be the person that people say to “Oh my gosh, I’ve always wanted to do that!” You can hand them my book (which hopefully you’ve got a physical copy of and have written all over!) and say, “here, this is how you can take one, and much sooner than you think.”

So if you want to take an epic road, get a copy of my book (which includes the sample trip for under $500 to the Grand Canyon), and then I want to hear your story of how you TOOK the trip. (p.s. If you have Amazon Prime, you can get it TOMORROW!)

Here’s us on our first epic road trip at the Grand Canyon.

When are you taking your epic road trip?

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