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At the moment we’re spending a few days away in the caravan.  This will be our last trip away before the “big trip” and the opportunity to iron out any little changes we want to make in preparation.

A few things we’re still working out include:

1.  What bedding to take.

We’ve all been using sleeping bags (mostly unzipped mind you) so this trip Farmboy and I have brought our doona.  It looks lovely and homely set up on the bed.

The trick will be how much space it takes up when the van is packed up.  We won’t know this until we get home (given it just got tossed in the caravan to get up here).  I suspect it will be a lot more comfortable.  Of course, the kids are now complaining that they want their doona’s as well so not sure what we’ll do there (other than space, their sleeping bags are a lot easier when they’re sleeping on the couch – which they’re currently taking turns in doing).

2.  What table to take.

We’ve been using a camping table that has 4 chairs attached to it as our “outside table”.  I think it’s important to have something we can put outside so that we don’t always have to eat inside.  However, we are considering whether to purchase one of those roll-up camping tables instead as they take up less room.  We do have camping chairs which we’ll take regardless although I do like the camping table with the chairs attached.

3.  Do we really have to take the kids?

LOL.  They’ve been a little bit excited so far this trip and I’m not sure I can keep this up for 100 days!!!!  Mind you, it has been a busy weekend and I’m pretty tired.  I’m sure the people in the caravan next door think we’re the grumpiest parents that they’ve ever heard!

4.  What to do about internet connection

I was planning to head off and see what happens in terms of internet connection.  Now that McDonald’s have free wifi and so do most public libraries, we really *should* be able to find connections most places.  Plus, most caravan parks offer casual internet usage for a fee.  Here it is $5 for 30 minutes!!!!!  Aaarrgggghhhh.  Seems pretty expensive (I know it wasn’t that expensive when we were in Canberra).

I’ve been considering whether I should splurge on a Next-G Telstra connection that uses mobile towers.  Need to do some more exploring on that one (I know it’s about $149 for the actual USB attachment but not sure how much the fees are).  While it’s a more costly option than finding free connections, it would certainly be rather convenient.

5.  Cooking in the van

Every time we go away in it, I try to practise different meals to build up our repertoire of “caravan meals”.  Tonight was a bit tricky as it’s the first time I’ve made hamburgers and everything has to be done in stages.  The grill is tiny so only fits 2 hamburger buns at a time.  Which is fine because I only have a small frypan as well.  Dinner had to be made in shifts.  Tomorrow I’m planning on trying a roast in the dreampot.  Fingers crossed it works (if not, at least we’re not far from some take away places!).

Plenty to think about anyway but mostly the smaller details being worked out now.  The kids are LOVING every opportunity to be in the van which is great.  Hopefully they’ll look back on these times with fondness.  I’ve been keeping a log and by the time we finish with this stint away we’ll have slept 38 nights in the van already.  Not bad going given we only bought it late September last year!!!

P.S.  I think I just wrote a list post - kind of.  Those who read Lightening’s Blogworld will understand the irony of that! 

I mentioned in my last post before going away for Easter the certainty of having plenty of smiley moments over the Easter weekend.

I obviously wasn’t thinking straight.

Or didn’t expect:

• To bash myself in the eye trying to unload the kids bikes from the back of the ute
• To come down with a cold and spend half the time sweating and the other half shivering uncontrollably.
• To have a young child crash into me while riding their bike
• To get bitten by March flies and have to endure HORRIBLE itching from the bites1
• To poke a stick through the bottom of my foot and end up with horrible bruising all around the wound that I can feel every time I take a step
• To be picking up after my children every half hour so that I can find the caravan under all their stuff!!!!
• To eat so much my pants don’t seem to want to do up (okay, I did kind of expect to eat too much)

LOL.

It wasn’t all bad, honestly. 

We did have HEAPS of fun!  It’s interesting to holiday close to home and really get a chance to have a good look around “in your own backyard” (figuratively speaking).

Views like this make my wonder why we’d ever want to go anywhere else!!!

These are some local fishfarms on the horizon:

The kids enjoyed running up and down some sand-dunes.  These are not far from where we stay in January every year and I had NO IDEA they were there!!!

Lleyton feels like he’s “on top of the world”:

We tried our hand at  Geogaching for the first time.  It’s a bit of a treasure hunt using GPS co-ordinates.  I don’t know a lot about it but the friends we were with did the research and found out about it.  We simply tagged along for the fun.  I think we’ll try and do some while on our big trip.

This was the first one we found:

Lots of fishing was the order of the weekend.  We even managed to actually catch some!!!!

And you gotta love a man fishing with a PINK fishing rod!!!!

Pity you can’t really tell from the photograph. 

I think you could safely say that “a good time was had by all”.  And the wonderful thing about not going far away is that we’re home, the caravan has been unpacked AND cleaned (go me!!!  I usually put it off for about a week) AND so far 2 loads of washing have gone through the machine (something for which my parched garden is extremely thankful).

The weather over the weekend was absolutely superb.  Great living weather.  We’d be happy for it to rain anytime now though. 

On the agenda for tonight is eating up leftovers and getting to bed early!!!!

Hope you all had a fabulous Easter weekend!!!!

Farmboy and I are off to the Caravan and Camping Show today. We have a few things on our agenda including:

* Talking to some tourism people about the best and worst places for crossing the Great Dividing Range with a caravan.

* Collecting some tourism information for the places we’d like to go (and hopefully talking to someone who can help us work out the best place to see the Great Barrier Reef).

* Catching up with the salesman who sold us our caravan and getting some more of his business cards (we’re getting good at handing them out).

* Watching a Dreampot demonstration (I bought mine at the caravan and camping show last year and would like to watch them again now that I’ve had a bit of a play with it - there’s so much that it can be used for).

* Looking for a few bits and pieces for the van in readiness for our trip.

* Having fun looking through the various vans and dreaming of what we might buy next. We’d like to buy a 5th-Wheeler when our kids are grown - you can get REALLY flash ones!!! Not that we’d go flash but they’re fun to look at. For those not familiar with them, they attach to the tray of a ute. It’s a good way to tow a big van, especially if you prefer to have a separate vehicle when stopped.

It should be lots of fun to spend the day together this way. It’s our “early anniversary present” to each other.

Speaking of holidaying, if you haven’t entered the Way2Go competition yet, there’s still time. In case you missed it, here is a repeat of the details as originally outlined in this post:

Way2Go are running a special competition EXCLUSIVELY for Lightening Online readers. What that means is that you SHOULD enter because your chances of winning a prize are quite HIGH.

Prizes up for grabs are:

1. The five winning entrants will receive 1 x Rebel Sports voucher (valued at $100) and 1 x one year subscription to Way2Go magazine (valued at $35.70)
2. The ten second place entrants will receive 1 x one year subscription to Way2Go magazine

So, what do you have to do?

Simply sign up to the Way2Go website and use the code word “lighteningonline” in the section “Promotional Code”. Then submit your own travel story to the website. Winning stories will be selected by the Way2Go team (check out the Terms and Conditions for more details).

You can find my first article “A Dream Is Born” on the website which details a little of our background story to the Big Trip we’re taking this year. I hope you’ll pop over there and leave me a comment (make me feel loved) and then sign up and submit your own story. I know many of you have great travel stories just busting to be shared.

Competition closes at 9am on 3 March, 2009. Unfortunately, this time round, this competition is only open to Australian Residents (apologies to my international readers - you know I still love you *mwah*). You can view the full Terms and Conditions here.

I really hope you’ll take the time to support this competition as the more successful it is, the more likely we’ll be offered other exclusive giveaways in the future. The total prize pool is in excess of $1000 which is obviously something I couldn’t offer on my own.

My mind has been working overtime trying to come up with meal ideas we can have while we’re away. To keep costs down, we need to do the bulk of our cooking in the caravan (rather than resorting to take away) so I thought it would be helpful if I could come up with a list of meal ideas and prepare laminated cards which detail what I need for each meal. Hopefully this will make grocery shopping and food preparation that little bit easier.

I’m thinking I would like at least 10 lunch ideas (for variety) and 20 or so meal ideas for the evening meal.

To cook with I have a small microwave, grill and stove-top as well as the dreampot (which is basically similar to cooking on the stovetop only I can have it cooking while we’re on the move or away).

Here’s what I have so far:

* Those in italics have been added after this post was published.

Lunches:

1. Sandwiches
2. Grilled Cheese on Toast
3. Cold Meat & Salad
4. Chopped Salad in a Bowl
5. Meat Pies
6. Cheese and Bacon Rolls (a favourite)
7. Salad Rolls
8. Salad Wraps
9. Cheese & Fruit Platter
10. Toasted Sandwiches
    

Evening Meal:

1. Corned Beef (Dreampot)
2. Spaghetti Bolognese
3. Baked Potatoes (Microwaved)
4. Hamburgers
5. Chicken Burgers
6. Chicken Wraps (Southern Fried Chicken Strips or Chicken Tenders)
7. BBQ’s - sausages, steak, chicken, burgers etc
8. Frozen Fish Fillets (Microwaved then Lightly Fried or Toasted to crisp up)
9. Cooked Chicken (bought cooked from Supermarket)
10. Steak Sandwiches
11. Diced Steak with Mushroom Sauce (Dreampot)
12. Coke or Apricot Chicken Legs (Dreampot)
13. Roast Beef or Chicken (Dreampot) - yet to try this out.
14. Tuna Mornay
15. Tuna Patties
16. Tacos
17. Quesadillas
18. Honey Soy Chicken Wings (Dreampot or Microwave)
    
19. Chicken and Sweetcorn Soup (Dreampot)
20. Pasta Dishes
21. Fried Rice
    

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Quick and simple with few ingredients is ideal. I also need to work out some frugal snack ideas as I don’t have an oven for baking.

Well, not upside-down exactly but we’re looking at changing our minds and heading off the way we intended to come home and coming home the way we intended to head off (or maybe come home an entirely different way).

One of my favourite hobbies is to plan trips. I love to sit down with a blank sheet of paper, a map, a calculator and a pencil (for some reason I prefer to write in pencil when I’m doing this). Then I plan how far we’ll drive each day, how many kilometres that will be and what town we’ll stay in.

When we planned our trip to Darwin a number of years back, I think I got almost as much pleasure from the planning stages as I did from the trip itself.

With our “big trip”, we’re trying not to plan things too closely. We have, however, been looking at a number of route options and planning a very broad timeline to ensure that we fit in the things we really want to do during our time away.

Today I’ve been playing around with the first 2 weeks of our trip away (with a change in direction) and things seem to be falling into place quite neatly. Hopefully that means we’re on the right track with changing our minds on which way we’ll head off. There are a few details we need to sort out before we can be sure that we’ll stick to this plan. And, with 5 and a half months to go, anything could change between now and then.

I am having fun plotting and planning though!

With our “Big Trip” approaching, I have been rather interested in reading websites, magazines and forums about travel adventures and ideas.

So I’m quite excited to be able to give you the scoop on a new website and magazine just launching. It includes a forum and reader stories of their own travel experiences as well as travel tips, photographs and more.

I’ll have more to tell you about this new project next week, but for now, please click through and have a sneak peak at the Way2Go website. Bear in mind it’s in the developing stages and more content will be added over time.

It’s a project I am keen to be involved with so stay tuned for more soon.

2009 has been a momentous date in our minds for quite some time now.

The first thing I whispered in my children’s ears this year?

“We’re going on our big trip THIS year!”

For so long it has seemed like 2009 was so far in the future and now it’s HERE!

Of course, the scary thing for me is that now it’s here, I’m afraid it’ll all be over before we can barely blink.

But I’m determined to savour every moment.

Hopefully you don’t get sick of me talking about our “big trip” before we even leave as I suspect you’ll all be my sounding board as we make preparations (and it feels like there are a LOT Of those to be made).

Christmas this year had a distinct “trip” theme about it. The kids each got their own toiletry bag, complete with toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, soap and a face washer. We’ve already been giving them a good workout at the shack but their primary purpose if for the “big trip”.

They also got a digital camera each so that they can record the trip through their own eyes. Already I’m amazed at their photography. It’s a great way to see the world through their eyes.

Next on my list of things “to do” is to look through the Back To School sales for school supplies we might need during the trip. I want the kids to each keep a hand-written journal/diary of the trip, complete with photographs and other pictures. I’m not sure yet what to use for these journals. On the one hand, I think something with a plastic sleeve would be good to keep them protected (as I imagine they’ll be read over and over). On the other, I’m thinking a book with lined pages will be easier for them to write in. I’m kinda hoping something will magically jump out at me but if you have any suggestions, I’m all ears.

Now will somebody pinch me because I’m not sure I can actually believe we’re going to do this trip - THIS year!!!

I made this video tour of our caravan while we were away and have finally gotten around to uploading it to the computer and then to you tube. Some of you may already have seen it on 3 Kids And A Caravan but for those of you who aren’t reading that blog, I thought I’d post it here as well.

I hope you enjoy my very first video post.

Image via WikipediaThis is one of those Big Hairy Audacious Goals (hereafter referred to as BHAG) like Suzie Cheel has talked about in the past.

After our discussions about our Big Trip budget, I’ve decided it would be mighty handy if I could come up with a bonus $5000 to contribute to the costs of the trip.

Kind of an “overflow” amount that can be used for things we don’t feel fit into our regular budget. Or if the projected budget doesn’t quite “make it” in spots.

Why $5000?

It seemed like a nice round figure and the rest of our budget is broken into $5000 amounts so it just seemed to make sense. It does feel like a reasonably “high” goal (ie. One I don’t expect to meet easily).

Setting things high inspires me to “reach for the stars” and put that little bit of extra effort into reaching for it.

That’s the theory anyway. That’s also why I’m classing it as a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal”.

How Do I Plan On Achieving This?

That’s a very good question. Here are some of my vague thoughts so far:

1. Sponsorship. In particular, selling advertising on 3 Kids And A Caravan. It’s still a small site in terms of traffic and search engine rankings so I need to work on this before I can expect any kind of sponsorship deals. I have another idea along sponsorship lines but not sure if it will pan out.
2. Writing articles for magazines. So far I have found one travel magazine that accepts (and pays for) reader submissions. Although I may not have too many articles I could write BEFORE we go away.
3. Putting $1 coins and $5 notes aside now ready for the trip ($1 coins for laundry and $5 notes for the kids weekly spending money). I’ll count this and add to the tally when it’s almost time to leave.
4. Using cash for our grocery shopping and spending as little as possible while I work on using up what we have on hand. Any surplus amounts can go toward this total.
5. Being frugal in general with our money between now and 31st January - anything left over can go toward the end tally. Last year we managed to live through January without any drawings (ie on surplus money in account from the rest of the year). If I can do this again, we’ll have $2000 (January Drawings) to put into the tally. Our spending has gone up considerably this year so I’m not sure if we’ll have much of a surplus but we’ll see. Even half would be a reasonably contribution to the overall tally.
6. Sell something. Ebay? Or make something to sell? No idea what.
7. Make better use of survey sites like emailcash and cash in on other reward points (eg flybuys, visa rewards). Small amounts but in my past experience, small amounts can add up if you have enough of them.

If you have any other suggestions, I’m all ears. I know many of you are mega creative when it comes to stuff like this so let me know if you think of something I can do/sell/create etc to help toward my final goal.

Time Frame

We’re hoping to leave in early July so I’m setting myself the deadline of June 30th 2009. That gives me 8 months to work on this goal.

Tracking My Progress

I will be blogging my progress but would also like to include some kind of widget in my sidebar so people can see my progress at a glance at any time. Unfortunately, all I’ve managed to find so far is a ticker bar, which works okay in my posts but won’t fit in my sidebar. If you know of any widgets that would work well in a sidebar, please let me know.

In the meantime, here is my lovely “treasure chest” ticker with my gold coin set firmly on zero. Hopefully not for too long.

One of the issues we were working on during our recent trip away was ways to travel on a budget. It’s easy to go through a lot of money in a short space of time while travelling. Generally we’re prepared for this to be the case as we’re only doing it for a couple of weeks a year. However, our plan is to travel for 12-14 weeks next year and we just cannot sustain the level of spending we normal have when away from home.

The caravan is helping a little with this as we’ve been able to cook our own meals a little easier than we do with the camper trailer and we have the facilities if we pull off the side of the road at lunch time. We’ve been trying to pack our own picnic lunches most days to reduce costs.

However, after a week in Canberra, I’ve estimated our spending on living expenses to be in the vicinity of $500. That’s for a week. We did have a couple more Take Away meals than is in the plan for our big trip but not enough that I feel our projected budget of $350 a week is going to be met easily.

It’s got us seriously thinking about what our budget will be for the trip and how we’ll go with affording it.

My original estimates (about 5 years ago) were $1000 per week (so $14000 all up). With recent price increases in fuel, caravan park charges and food, we’ve revised this estimate. Here’s what I came up with:

LIVING EXPENSES

$350 per week (total for trip $5000)

This has to cover food, take away, spending money, money for washing machines etc.

Until we spent $500 on our week in Canberra, I was of the mindset that it should be plenty. Even allowing for the $5 each spending money we’re planning to have per week and another $25 for laundry costs, it’s more than double what we now spend on food.

While the caravan helps to keep costs down, there are a lot of limitations imposed such as not being able to buy in bulk or buy up when on special. Cooking facilities are limited as well and I’m still working on ideas for both meals and snacks with what facilities I do have.

Add onto that the temptation to purchase Take Away (where we live now, take away is too far away to be much of a temptation), especially on busy days and I can see food being our biggest hurdle as far as the budget goes.

We’re toying with the idea of adding an additional $50 per week into the budget, earmarked for Take Away purchases. If we can come up with an extra $700 between now and when we go, we may well do this.

SITE FEES

$50 per night (total of $5000 for trip)

These have increased quite a bit in the past couple of years. Many are now charging as much extra per child as they do for a cabin which is frustrating (and expensive).

We’re not real keen to attempt “side of the road” and other camping style stays although these would reduce our expenses quite dramatically.

We were given a 12 month membership to Top Tourist Parks (from the caravan company) and plan to take out a Big 4 membership before we go which will be well worth our while. These give us 10% discount on most stays which will help.

FUEL

$5000 total (works out to around $350 per week although we’ll work on a lump sum as some weeks we’ll do a lot more km’s than other weeks).

This is our biggest unknown with Fuel prices so erratic. Farmboy thinks this should get us 15,000 km’s which sounds like a lot but it’s around 8,000 straight up and back and it’s amazing how many km’s you do in general running around. Of course, it will all come back to what fuel prices are doing at the time we go.

It would seem that keeping our speed under 100km/hr gets us better fuel economy so we may just need to take things steady in order to meet this budget.

SIGHT-SEEING

Farmboy has been doing some extra work to pay for our sight-seeing costs. At this stage his goal is to earn an extra $5000 before we go. The budget will basically be whatever he ends up earning with the extra work he’s doing.

There are some reasonably expensive things we would like to do but then there will likely be week’s where we won’t spend anything so I hope things will balance out that way.

PROJECTED BUDGET

That brings our projected budget to around $20,000 which sounds like a lot doesn’t it? I’m only responsible for finding $15,000 of that budget. It’s not the kind of trip that’s easy to up and do on a whim. It’s been over 10 years now that we’ve been planning and saving which means I’ve only had to find less than $30 a week on average. It doesn’t sound quite so bad when you break it down like that does it?

Of course, the budget is really only a guestimate at this point in time. If we can keep within it, we won’t need to go into debt to do the trip. If it turns out we’ve underestimated, we may have to make some tough decisions about whether we are prepared to go into debt and work on paying back the extra spent as quickly as possible.

CARAVAN COST

At this point in time, we’re not counting our caravan cost in the cost of the trip. While it is a “cost” associated with the trip, we expect that we should be able to get most (if not all) of the investment in the caravan back if we were to sell it upon our return.

Having the caravan will save us an estimated $10,000 on the cost of the trip without one (assuming the alternative is to use cabins), not to mention the convenience of having everything on hand and not having to live out of suitcases the entire time.

It’s not our intention to sell it but we’re prepared to if we feel we can’t afford to keep it. Which gives me extra incentive to be frugal so that we can afford to keep it.

ARE WE RICH?

I don’t believe we are. I know there are plenty of people out there who struggle with the basics and couldn’t even contemplate a trip like this. Then again, there are also many who are on similar or larger incomes to ours who live week to week and would consider us as rich for being able to afford to do this.

This is where I particularly love frugality and all that goes with it. I love how much further our money has stretched since I’ve learnt the value of frugality and the fact that we are so much more empowered with the choices we’re making in regard to how we use our money.

Without frugal living, there is no way we would have been able to save the money to do this trip.

BUDGET TIPS

If anyone has any suggestions for keeping expenses down while we’re on the road, I’d love to hear them. Every little bit helps and we want maximum fun for minimum cost.