Originally Posted by
BigAura
To me touring budget is about averaging your costs.
$60 per day =
$420 per week:
- motel: $60 x 2 = $120
- campsite: $25 x 5 = $125
- food: $25 x 7 = $175
That's doable but you'll need to limit your dining to one moderate priced restaurant a day.
You can also buy prepared food at most super markets.
It should be really easy to get by with those numbers. The motel number is about right if you are careful. The campsite number is really a generous allowance if my experience is typical at all. The food allowance is pretty generous too unless you spend a lot on beverages or eat in fancier places in larger cities. Alcoholic beverages or maybe even lots of soft drinks will make the food budget a bit tighter if you tend to go that route.
To some degree it may vary with your route, but on both of my coast to coast tours and my other long trips I averaged WAY less than that for camping on every tour. Mostly I just completely ruled out anywhere that charged than much. I think we averaged under $5 a night on the Trans America, but we were splitting the cost of sites in the cases where they charged per site (a good many charged per person). Even alone and therefore with no cost splitting I think I have always averaged under $10 a night for camping on long tours.
On the Trans America and Southern Tier routes it is pretty easy to stay for free more than half the time with no need for stealth. Across much of the middle of the country just pitching a tent in a small town park's picnic area was always free and I have never been run off. Rarely they were posted and I found another free place to camp after asking around. I usually found a place to camp for free and in plain sight in just about any small town. In Texas I stayed in roadside picnic areas and had zero problems, but I did not pitch a tent in those. Most of them had a roof and if the weather turned bad I used my bivy sack. If you follow one of the Adventure Cycling routes the maps will list a lot of free or cheap places to stay.
In the East I suspect it is likely to be a bit harder for you to find free or cheap camping, but you can still get by fairly reasonably.
Normally I avoid RV park type places because they tend to be crazy expensive, but on the Southern Tier I found a few of them that charged $10 for cyclists.
I figure that you can eat pretty good on $25 per day so that should involve no hardship. Even $10 or $15 isn't crazy hard to manage on.