Costs
Part of Scenic route case studies: the results and the conditions behind them
Vehicle wear belongs in the budget for scenic route case studies too
How to build the cost section of a scenic route case study: which lines to record, how to handle vehicle wear, and why free activities still cost money.
What to take away
- Record what you spent, not what the trip should have cost. The gap is the interesting part.
- Vehicle wear belongs in the sheet, especially on unpaved routes.
- Free activities still carry a cost in fuel, time and equipment. Say so.
- Publish the conditions alongside the numbers or the numbers cannot be compared.
The cost section is where most trip write-ups go soft, because people round, forget and quietly leave out the expensive mistake. A case study that does the opposite is far more useful than one with tidy figures.
Record the lines separately
- Fuel, from receipts and actual mileage.
- Beds, by night, with the type stated.
- Food, split into planned and bought on the day.
- Site fees and permits, per site.
- Vehicleanything from a puncture to a full service brought forward.
- One-off costs you would not repeat, listed and explained.
Six lines. Every one of them should trace to something you can point at.
Six Cost Lines to Record
- Fuelreceipts and actual mileage
- Bedsby night, type stated
- Foodplanned and bought on the day
- Site fees and permitsper site
- Vehiclepuncture to full service
- One-off costslisted and explained
Vehicle wear is not optional on unpaved routes
Rough surfaces cost money after the trip, not during it. That is why they get left out. The BLM says Utah's Bull Creek Pass Back Country Byway is a remote single-lane dirt road for 68 miles with numerous rough sections, steep grades and blind curves.
It climbs from desert floor to alpine elevations, with developed campgrounds along the way.
Sixty-eight miles of that is not free, though nobody charges for it. Put a wear figure in, state how you calculated it, and say that it is an estimate.
Free activities still have a cost line
Plenty of the best things on a scenic route cost nothing and something to reach. Dragonfly watching is one: no fee, and people plan trips around it.
The Fish and Wildlife Service calls it a growing interest on refuges, quoting a former refuge ranger on how fascinated visitors are with finding dragonflies and damselflies. No ticket, but still fuel, time and probably close-focus binoculars.
Record those as costs attributable to the activity. Otherwise the case study implies the day was free, which is not a lesson anyone can use.
State the conditions with the numbers
A cost sheet without the month, the fuel price, the party size and the accommodation pattern is not comparable to anything. Put those four at the top of the section.
Readers can then scale your figures to their own trip, which is the whole point of publishing them. Add the vehicle as a fifth line if it was unusual, since fuel economy on a long unpaved route varies enough between vehicles to make identical trips look very different on paper.
Include what went wrong
The most valuable line in any case study cost section is the one that reads: this happened, it cost this much, and here is how to avoid it. Two or three of those are worth more than a perfectly balanced sheet.
Fit the section into the overall record structure described in scenic route case studies with budgets and lessons, and pick a study format that suits what you want to learn from scenic route case study formats worth trying.
