Eastern Oregon Road Trip: The Budget

There is usually a lot of interest in my trip budget posts, so here we are. I also decided to include all the cute pics of Harrison I haven’t included yet, just because I can. So, for whatever reason you’re here - you’re welcome.

This was such a budget friendly trip - we brought a lot of our own food, we camped, and most of our activities were free. We drove a car that we purchased for $500 and that had a bumper literally zip tied onto the vehicle. We could have spent even less by camping more nights, eating fewer meals at restaurants (for us, this is almost always a big part of our vacation budget, but that’s just how we like to travel), and foregoing some of the more expensive activities like the tramway. In other words, with a little planning and preparation, this is a really doable trip.

Accommodations: $567.92
Food: $200 on groceries, $549.83 eating out
Activities: $155.21
Gas: $162.24
Souvenirs: $55

Total: $1690.20

If you’d like even more details, I’ll break down some of the categories. Of course, if you want even more information, most of the spots are described in more detail in previous posts about our trip (here, here, here, and here).

Accommodations: 2 nights of camping at Wallowa Lake State Park - $78; 2 nights staying in the Cozy Camper - $197.06; 2 nights at Haiku Hollow - $150.69; 1 night Airbnb rental in La Pine - $142.17

I would not change any of our accommodations, but it would be very possible to do this same trip and camp each night. Even at the rate we paid for our state campground (many campsites in the areas we visited were less expensive, even free - of course facilities vary), we could have spent half as much on places to sleep.

Food: This is such a personal preference, but for us this is an area where we tend to splurge on vacation. Our most expensive meal was Cowboy Dinner Tree. At this cash only restaurant, the options are chicken or steak, but be prepared to have leftovers - the experience and both the quality and quantity of the food are well worth $45 a person. But again, if this isn’t how you want to spend your hard earned cash on vacation, I estimate that another $100 of groceries, at most, would have eliminated most of the need to eat any restaurant meals. And probably most people are better at planning groceries and using coupons, so there are likely many, many ways to spend less than that. Again, we could have potentially halved our budget in this area.

Activities: For the most part we stuck to the free stuff. The two things we spent the most on were the Tramway at $76.32 for two adults (Harrison was free) and the Railriders at $75 (there was a small charge for Harrison this time, which makes sense as he had his own car seat). And that was it. One thing I loved about visiting this part of Oregon was the abundance of free things to do, especially outdoors.

The one non-negotiable for this trip was gas. We did a lot of driving. A LOT of driving. Even so, with a little planning I think it would certainly be possible to plan your own Eastern Oregon Road Trip for less than $1000. Now enjoy one last picture of my sweet son having one of the best weeks of his life so far, which was more than worth every single penny.