Costs
Part of Sorting American roadside attractions into four types worth knowing
Five cost lines, one padding line: a roadside attractions weekend budget
The real cost lines of a two-day roadside attraction weekend: fuel, beds, site fees, food and the padding that keeps a schedule from collapsing.
What to take away
- A roadside attractions weekend budget has five cost lines and one padding line. For two days, the lines are fuel, beds, site fees, food and contingency.
- Fuel and beds dominate. Attraction fees are usually the smallest line on the sheet.
- Free and paid sites often sit side by side, so the same area can be cheap or not.
- Camping is the biggest single lever on a two-night weekend, and it needs booking earliest.
- Budget one wasted stop. Planning as though nothing closes is how weekends go over.
A roadside attraction weekend has a strange cost shape. The things you drove to see are often free, and the money goes to moving and sleeping. Getting the proportions right matters more than shaving any single line.
The five lines that make up the total
- Fuel, calculated from actual route mileage rather than the direct distance between cities. For a 300-mile direct route, detours add 20 to 40 percent, so 360 to 420 miles. At 25 mpg and a typical $3.00 to $3.80 per gallon, that is $43 to $64.
- Beds for two nights, or one night plus a long drive home. Motel rooms in many markets run $90 to $180 per night; federal campsites often cost $15 to $35. That is $30 to $360 for the line.
- Site fees, reservations and parking. Day-use fees at federal areas often run $5 to $35 per vehicle. Red Rock Canyon's scenic drive in Nevada has a timed entry reservation and a separate vehicle fee.
- Food, split between one planned meal and everything else. A casual dinner runs $15 to $30 per person. Groceries for two days run $10 to $15 per person per day. Two people total $70 to $120.
- Contingency, meaning the stop that was closed and the meal you bought anyway. Set 10 to 15 percent of the first four lines. On a $300 weekend, that is $30 to $45.
Work out fuel first. On this kind of trip the detours are the trip, so route mileage often runs twenty to forty percent above the direct line.
Five Budget Lines
- Fuel from route mileage, not direct distance
- Accommodation for two nights
- Site fees, reservations and parking
- Foodone planned meal plus rest
- Contingency for closures and extra meals
Site fees are smaller and stranger than people expect
Federal fees are not uniform. Neighboring sites can be priced differently, as the BLM's Red Rock Canyon Campground page in Nevada shows.
The scenic drive needs a separate timed entry reservation for each day, required from October 1 to May 31. In recent seasons, vehicle entry to the scenic drive was $20 and the timed entry reservation $2. The campground itself is a separate reservation, often $20 per night.
Red Spring and Calico Basin two miles away is a no fee area with no reservation. Two stops, one weekend, opposite cost lines: read the site page rather than assuming a regional rate.
Beds are the lever worth pulling
Two nights of lodging usually outweighs everything except fuel, which makes camping the biggest available saving on a roadside weekend. A motel room in many markets runs $90 to $180 per night, or $180 to $360 for two nights.
A federal campsite often runs $15 to $35 per night, or $30 to $70 for two. The Fish and Wildlife Service points out that refuges from Alaska to Florida offer campsites and rental cabins.
For Kenai in Alaska, it notes that camping fees apply at two campgrounds, that some sites can be reserved online, and that senior and access passholders get a 50 percent discount. Refuge campsites typically run $10 to $20 per night, and rental cabins often run $45 to $75. That detail is per site and needs checking each time.
Food, and the cost of not planning it
The predictable failure is arriving somewhere at 2 p.m. with no food and no options, then paying twice for something disappointing. One cooler, one planned dinner and one flexible lunch covers most weekends.
A casual dinner runs $15 to $30 per person. Groceries for two days run $10 to $15 per person per day, so two people can eat on $70 to $120. Treat coffee and cold drinks on a hot driving day as a planned cost. They keep the afternoon from being wasted.
Padding, and where to put it
Add a contingency of roughly ten to fifteen percent, and hold it as time as well as money. On a $300 weekend, that is $30 to $45.
An hour of slack on Saturday afternoon is worth more than the same value in cash, because it lets you keep a stop rather than abandon it. Decide in advance which stop is the one you drop.
Building the sheet
Start from the route, not the wish list, and choose stops with our guide to roadside attractions across the country. Then apply the same scrutiny to any packaged option using how to compare tours built around these stops.
A tour that looks expensive per day can look reasonable once fuel and lodging are on the same page. As a check, a two-person weekend with 400 route miles, two campsite nights, low site fees, simple food and 10 percent padding often lands near $180 to $300. A motel version often lands near $350 to $600.
