I’m glad we did take a night at a downtown hotel in San Francisco, but I doubt we’ll do it too much on this trip. The rate looked OK when we booked it: $109 per night. By comparison, the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero down the street was $265. So I thought, “Hey, that’s a good deal for downtown!”

But let’s see how that added up:

base rate $109.00
parking $36.0 (yikes!)
tax on parking $5.04 (they tax parking here?)
tax on hotel $15.26
TOTAL $165.30

Plus the optional extras, which I avoided:

— T-Mobile Hotspot Internet access for one day $9.99 (I picked up a signal from the Holiday Inn across the street, which gives guests free access for a day)
— Calistoga spring water in room $4.50 (Eleanor, put down that bottle!)
— And heaven help you if you make a long-distance call on the room phone.

At that rate, our 9 weeks of travel so far (not counting our week in Vermont) would have cost $10,413.90. Even at the national average or $85 per night, it would have been $5,355. We haven’t spent anywhere near that on lodging, with the Airstream, even counting the gas to haul it around.

People ask us about budgeting, but nobody wants to come right out and ask us what this trip is costing. To tell the truth, I don’t really know yet. I haven’t tallied it up, but I do know that it is less than it cost us to stay home. Our increased expenses (campsites, extra fuel, cell phones, etc) are more than compensated by the decreased expenses (no mortgage, real estate taxes, winter heating bill, utilities, ec). But we’ll have to watch it on the hotel splurges, that’s for certain!