Recently food prices prices have gone up quite a bit in the southeast. It won't be long before oil prices affect other things as well. But for now, $40/day sounds about right: about $20/day avg for camping, $10-15 for food if you buy grocery food, $20 if you eat breakfast and either of lunch or dinner at a fast food place, and $5 for incidentals.

Bike touring is about the cheapest form of vacationing other than backpacking, but it is not free by a long shot. Even if you camp for free where allowed, stay in parks, etc, it would be hard to do it for less than 20 a day because you just can't camp every day in most areas and / or eat just Peanut butter sandwiches and Ramen noodles and stay healthy. If pressed you could pull it off for $25-30 a day, but only at the cost of a great deal of comfort, eating a lot of starches.

albertmoreno.

I've done about 10 or 12 months of bike touring, spread over several tours, so, I'm not pulling numbers out of no-where.

To clarify, I said I spent about $40, and that meant for both food and lodging, on average (ish, not calculated). Touring is a vacation for me, I make OK money and I like to enjoy my vacations, which for me means eating nicer food and camping where there are showers and bathrooms most of the time and hotel rooms occasionally. I'm not talking steak dinners every night here, but I am talking about meals that are nutritious, tasty and enjoyable, including meat, vegetables, grains, fruits and the all-important ice-cream food group.

It certainly can be done on the cheap. The original post on this thread, though does not say "how little can I possibly spend" it says "From your experiences what was your overall cost per day..."

I hope to hear back from you after you complete your first tour, and see if it plays out as you expect: if you enjoy yourself, if you remain healthy, and if you spend what you expect. I sincerely hope you do. But I don't think you're really getting it.

Also, are you sure you support illegal trespassing? How about I come camp on your lawn and crap in your flower beds? Is it ok if I go in your back yard and fill my water bottles out of your spigot? Oh look, you have tomatoes, yum.... I guess you can just take the law into your own hands and shoot me... oh wait, I'm you now, getting shot by the homeowner.... Really, too many laws, are you SURE?

No, I would never trespass on someone's personal property. That's rude and creepy. I was thinking more like unused, unnoticed land and I would make sure to be respectful and leave things clean and as they are. I think I shot myself in the foot with the comment. Finals must be making me cranky.

Yea, I should be seeing soon enough with my practice runs. I'll revise my plans accordingly.

Ah, see, if it's public land and not posted "no trespassing" then it may not be illegal so sure, that's "wild camping" and can be fine.

Peace dude, thanks for owning it.

Yea, thanks for pointing out that this said average costs. I planned to do from the border of Mexico up to Oregon through the central valley of California, to the Pacific coast and down in about 90 days. My initial budget was $1500, but I may either need to start pinching more pennies for my savings or adjust the distance I want to cover to fit my budget. In any case, I would want to be as thrifty as possible. Sacrificing some comforts would be okay with me, as well as indulging from time to time. I'm gonna do a search on how to eat and lodge on the cheap, but experience will probably teach me a whole lot more than just reading. I realize now that it might cost a little more than I realized and I'd rather budget for a little more than I need than end up out of money and going home early.

I did a coast-to-coast bicycle trip, 75 days (feb-mar 2010), and it cost me $17.50 per day average. That includes campground fees, food, bicycle repairs (tube, chain, brake pads) and three motel days. I stealth camped about half the time and was hosted about five days. If a campground is expensive I try and find someone to split a site. I cook most of my food but did eat some restaurant and fast-food too.

I'm NOT including transportation home, although I could, because it cost me nothing driving someone's car back east for them. Also NOT included is health insurance, and cell phone.

You own an LHT and a CC? Which one did you use? or was it one of your other bikes?

Last year, Bill Stone listed a calculator over on CG that lets you customize your estimates to your trip's specifics

https://books.stonebooks.com/cgi-bin/bike_calc.cgi

Anyplace that is not signed "No Trespassing" or fenced off, I assume that camping for a night is permitted. If a land-owner or ranger told me to move, I would move, but I would also wonder what they are doing in the forest in the middle of the night.

The OP doesn't need to do any searching, he just needs to go out and do a shake down tour of about three days over a long weekend some time before he heads off on a major tour. That will give him some idea of how much it's going to cost, and what he's comfortable with. Otherwise, he might as well be asking "how long is a piece of string?".

The problem with relying on a message board for an answer to this question is that only the OP knows what his needs are, and even then, there are some that he'll only work out while he's on the road. Granted, he could dredge up the last thread on this topic, and trawl through all the "well, I live exclusively on lentils and dried fruit, so I can tour for as little as $1.50 a month, so I don't understand why all those Africans are starving" posts. However, unless the OP plans to live like that on the road for several weeks (and has done a short tour to experience it), it would be a pointless exercise.

Thanks for all the responses, I appriciate your opinions and I will take them into account.
Take care

What kind of food we buy varies depending on what is available.

First breakfast is likely to be a granola bar or maybe oatmeal. It is often followed by a stop at a diner after 10-20 miles for second breakfast. If there is no second breakfast then I snack while I ride (fig newtons, fruit, baked goods, granola...).

Lunch is either a restaurant stop, a sandwich bought at the breakfast stop, or something carried along. Most often it is something like bagels and peanut butter, hard salami and hard cheese on chips or crackers (with avocado or something if available), or maybe something like foil packed tuna or salmon wraps.

Dinner could be pasta, red beans and rice, some kind of boxed noodle or rice dish, or just about anything that we would eat at home.

I usually only carry food for the day with a bit of reserve unless we are somewhere that I need to take two days + worth along. Most often I find I can shop daily.

unless you're eating ramen noodles and/or generic mac and cheese ( @ 6 for a dollar) 3x /day, i don't buy that you can have a weekly food budget of only $30/week.

I believe it can be done, but unless you are dirt poor why would you want to? I spent that much on fresh fruit alone.

i toured the TA last year. i carried a coleman peak stove, multi-fuel. i had received advice both ways beforehand on whether to take it or not, given the purported availability of food everywhere.

first, i found that to be true; food is generally available on any given day (but maybe only once during the day), and often times, only of the convenience store variety, meaning, no fresh fruits, veggies, meat, etc. canned crap only. THAT gets old fast.

i used my stove all the time. i made camp coffee each morning in a small percolator that i brought. with my riding partners, we cooked dinner very often. lots of very heatlhy ideas here: orzo, beans, pasta (with olive oil, canned tomatoes, etc.), oatmeal for breakfast (sometimes with granola - YUM !). we ate very well when we cooked. no question the stove was great to have, even if just for morning coffee.

you will definitely eat alot more on a tour, trust me. you become a fuel-burning machine, and it IS important to fuel yourself correctly, or you'll pay the price.

that's what i mean. unless you eat cardboard, $30 a week is impossible.

Pretty much exactly what I do. And I am a big fan of the second breakfast. I learned quickly on my first tour that the first light breakfasty simply didn't do the trick, especially in the mountains.

Nope, not at all. Im not the richest dude around, but I make decent money right now, and I usually live on $20-30 a week in groceries. This would probably be harder if you didnt have a bulk food place around like I do, but its really easy to do actually. For awhile I had a friend who probably only spent $15 a week when he was layed off. For just one guy $30 a week can buy a lot of food. I eat the basics though, oatmeal, meat sandwhiches, lots of homemade foods. But by no means do i eat "cardboard". I just enjoy making my own food, and that allows me to eat a lot cheaper.

i'd be curious to see a typical weekly grocery shopping list to see what you do for under $30/week. i do all my own cooking, as well, from scratch, and i still don't see how you can have any meaningful diet on that little cost.

I did a three week tour for which the cost per day averaged out to $7. This includes an overpriced KOA stop. It also figures in money given to me by kind people along the way, which negated the KOA. No, I don't look ragged or needy or homeless, folks where just being nice

During that tour, I carried a lot more weight than I ever have before. This is because whenever I came upon a town big enough to support enough grocery stores to compete with each other, I'd stock up on cheap, filling food. Hamburger buns, ramen, pasta, instant rice, tomato soup. I picked up plenty of veggies at farmer markets and corn stands for even less. Before I left, I bought a three pound bag of trail mix for eight dollars at a costco, and 24 clif bars at less than sixty cents each. I carried all this and it was worth the weight because I was able to travel much further and make my tour last longer when I wasn't spending so much money on food.

I only paid for camping during the first week. After that, I started wild camping and asking to camp in town parks more. I admit I squatted at national forest campgrounds a few times, but in a few instances it was with the camp hosts approval, and I always went around and picked up garbage in the evening to try and compensate. It's still illegal, yes, but I feel it's less immoral that way.

Anyway, the point is I had a great time for $7/day. I never felt like I was depriving myself of anything - instead I felt good that I was saving enough so if I needed to take a motel night, I could. For my next tour, I'm actually planning on baking bread and making beef jerky over a campfire on my rest days.

For the person who "doesn't support stealth camping"... That sort of mentality scares me a bit. The notion that only those who work regular hours and have a steady income should be able to travel freely is very... restrictive. So is the notion that we should all be herded into campgrounds and motels where we can sleep in our state-approved beds.

That's a great idea! You can make an oven with rocks.

I don't know that I agree with this statement. My planned tour From Jersey to Fl books in at 32 days. At $40 per day, the accepted number by many here, I'm looking at $1280 to get to Florida. Air fare home, today, about $300. Total trip cost: $1580.

I just drove that trip two weeks ago. Gas cost $320, tolls $18, and food was $41. I didn't sleep in motels for the two brief rest stop naps. Total mileage covered was 2410. I stayed with my kids while in FL.

Granted not a vaca where i stayed at hotels etc, however, the cost difference to cover the same ground is striking: $379 by car, vs $1580 by bike. Skip flying home and instead round tripping by bike would cost even more, $2560. Reduced daily cost by bike to $25 a day and the RT still cost $1600

I stayed in Fl for four days. With the cost difference of $1200 to almost $2200 i could have stayed at motels every night and eaten quite well.

The difference, of course, is time. While the cost per day is much less on a bike, it takes many more days to cover the same ground. The cost of eating and lodging is a fixed cost per day regardless of mode of transport. So, while cheap, bicycle touring not always the cheapest way to go.

I think you need to understand what is being objected to. As I understand the posts, what some like myself do not support is the use of private (and possibly public) property, where it is otherwise not legal to camp, without permission. I don't hear anyone saying we should "herded" or forced into campgrounds and motels to sleep in state-approved beds. Perhaps you should re-read some of the earlier posts.

If you are advocating that you should be able to make use of others' private property simply because you want to, I would like to hear your reasoning behind that. Until then, I am going to walk across the street to the Four Seaons Hotel and demand that they give me a room for free, or at least let me sleep in the lobby, since their room rates are very restrictive. And my gas tank is almost empty so I am going to demand a free fill up. I will let you know how that all works out for me.

Right, but we're talking about costs per day, and we're talking about vacation, not travel. You spent $379 covering 2410 miles. So, sure, doing the same mileage would cost you more on a bike, but your costs per day would be significantly lower. If you had a four day vacation and all you spent was that $379 (even though it sounds like that was your travel expenses, not your vacation expenses), that's still over $90/day, more than twice the higher estimates for bicycle touring. And if you chose to spend your vacation driving 10 hours a day instead of biking, you would hit that $40 mark in gas without even getting around to the eating and lodging issues.

So, yes, bicycling might not be the most cost-efficient way to travel across the country, but a day bicycling is still going to be cheaper then a day driving, not to mention more fun.

Of course the cheapest vacation is just staying home, but this isn't really a "budgeting your staycation" thread.

Camping on private land is allowed in Scotland and works perfectly well. The immediate surroundings of houses are excluded as are certain other areas and growing crops etc but otherwise anywhere goes.
All it needs is a bit of consideration on both sides. I wouldn't camp close to someones house without asking them (whether I have the legal right or not) and landowners don't lose sleep over someone pitching a tent on a quiet, remote, part of their land for a few hours. The idea is that landowners own the land but not the access. It is also legal to walk or cycle anywhere on private land.

So what harm does it do to a landowner if someone camps on their land? One person having complete control over an area of land is not the only framework that works.