We call this the quarterly budget recap, but technically Rogue Trip was only scheduled for 10 months. And, as our future selves post this update, we’ve actually completed the trip and the budget! Sorry about the spoilers. At any rate, this is Q3, the final quarter so to speak.

Happy to say, we nailed the trip budget. So much so that there’s really nothing exciting to report about the last three months… but this spreadsheet ain’t gonna report itself, so here we are.

As a reminder, here’s our Q2 recap, and below are the core budget lines we’ve been tracking:

• Lodging: anywhere we pay to rest our heads, including campgrounds, Airbnbs, hotels, etc.
• Meals: yep
• Activities: basically any other part of our day that costs money
• Mileage: the only non-dollar item being tracked daily

Through August:

Through September:

Through October:

Recap:

Lodging costs over this past quarter were zero. Zilch. As a result, we can now say we made it around the country over the course of 2017 having spent a mere $890 on rent. $3 per day. Again, we have the great weather to thank for that, which is why planning matters. Romantic as it might sound to up and decide one day to sell all your things and get out on the road, it’s more romantic to not die of heat exhaustion.

Meals cooled down a bit since we had the luxury of staying with a fair number of Mitch’s friends and family. It also helped that we’re experienced enough as eaters to say that Memphis marked the end of our “adventure dining”: everything beyond that was cuisine we’d experienced before, so we no longer felt the compulsion to force-feed ourselves the many local recommendations. That said, we did go on a four-day lobster roll bender in New England.

Activities weren’t as highfalutin or high-priced as they’d been in previous areas of the country, save for a $200+ day at the salon in Pittsburgh (we can’t remember why we put this in the trip budget rather than our incidental expense tab.) When all was said and done, activities were knocked down to $26/day by the end of the trip — remember that includes coffee shops and any other food we reluctantly consumed just to have wifi or electricity or bathrooms.

Mileage just keeps rising, and the end of October put us just a shade under 33,000 miles traveled, or 120/day. This might be the most surprising part of the trip: the availability of Internet, and the relative non-factor that time zones played. In fact, the months we spent on Pacific Time were arguably the easiest for working, despite our work being on Eastern Time.

We racked up a few more miles in November, which mildly altered the final trip numbers. 34,301 miles was the total tally; Odie smiled his way through each and every one.