More New Tires! That Makes 25 this year!

Wow!  More tires!  

You can’t be serious!  

Last August, we were travelling from Montrose,  Colorado to Marysvale,  Utah when we blew two tires on the camper.

Read these two previous post to hear about that!

Though we bought 19 tires last August, that did not include our Dodge Dually.  We drove all the way from Virgin, Utah to a campground near Branson, Missouri with only one cracked rim on the camper, which is quite common for us.  That happened somewhere between Grants, New Mexico and Amarillo, Texas.  My husband was doing his normal check of the tires, rims, and motors before we would head out the next day when he came across the crack in the camper rim.  He found a local tire place that got us one pretty quick and we got it put on and left the next day.

But, back to the current wheel problem.

 Thankfully, my husband is very meticulous when it comes to motors, campers, vehicles, and basically anything you would consider “a guy’s job”.  A couple of days ago he came in and broke the bad news, “Honey, we have to buy tires for the truck.”  Oh no, I thought.  Seriously?  We just bought 19 tires last fall and now we have to buy six more!  Plus, the truck tires cost more than the other ones. 

Shae was looking over all of our machines, motors, tires, and equipment – on an almost daily inspection – when he spotted the bulge in the back outside tire of our dually.  He told me how thankful he was that we had made it to Missouri without it busting.  So since my oldest son needs our van for his new job, I asked my husband to get new tires quick, which he had already planned on doing.

Today we made the 40 minute trip to Walmart to get the new tires on.  We have always used locally owned tire shops but this time we thought we would go with a nationally owned shop in case we have problems down the road.  When we go to a local shop in a particular town we can almost guarantee that we will not be going back to that town again.  If the shop does bad work, we can’t just bring it back and say, “Fix It!”  We might be 1000 miles away before we catch their mistake!  Believe me, this has happened to us.

After we arrived at Walmart, my husband glanced at the tire with the bulge in it and the bulge had tripled its size in just a short drive!  The Lord really protected us, as usual!

He decided on a NITTO Dura Grapplor tire.  We hope it will do good for us.

Tires are definitely something we have to budget for.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Nitto-205-130/19473690  These are the tires that Shae decided on.

The rim was welded back at one time.  Now, we just replace them.

Shae checks our tires often which has saved many a problems on the road.

Sometimes we get the same rim and other times we do not.

Budgeting on the Road During the Holidays

With the holidays looming we can't help but look at our finances.  We have normal travel expenses - camp fees which range from $350 - $600 a month.  Sometimes those fees include utilities and sometimes they don't.  If the camp fee doesn't include utilities we usually pay around $100 a month for electric.

Usually we have dental appointments at the end of the year and hope there are no cavities.  With eight of us there usually is and our insurance only covers so much.

Since we are from Missouri, we have personal property tax due December 31st.  What a terrible time of the year to have to pay taxes!  We get taxed every year on what vehicles we own and our ATVs, UTV, and camper.  This year it is about $700 for us.  Then we have Missouri State Tax due in April.

With six kids, the cost of presents can get high, fast. There is not a lot of room in the camper so we have to buy less than when we had a house.  For every toy brought in one is brought out.  I have found a way to pack a lot of their toys in the back room but there is not enough room for all of them. When we go back to Missouri we trade out toys with some that are packed in a storage trailer.

The most asked question about our trip is -

"How can you afford it?"

Shae is an engineer for a telecommunications company.  We are so thankful for a job during this economy and then also for a job that he can do from home.  His company doesn't care where he is as long as he has cell phone signal and internet.

Cody and Hanna, my two oldest children, are doing bible school on line as well as working on our blog and website.  We try to make money from our internet businesses.

Travel isn't cheap.  We knew we wouldn't be saving any money by going on the road full time.  Many people that travel stay free in national forests or boon dock elsewhere.  For us, it is hard to boon dock anywhere.  Usually where we boon dock there is no cell signal.  So, we stay at campgrounds.  Not only that. by the time we pay for the gas to run the generator, with gas prices as high as they are and have been, it is cost effective to stay at a campground for a month that might average $12 a night.  We have to do a load of laundry a day so that would cost us at least $1.75 a day for laundry.  If we don't have full hook-ups I have to go to a laundromat and pay.  We have a washer/dryer in our camper and it has already paid for itself.

We are in one area for the next few months so gas expenses will be lower.  The only problem is we have family coming to visit.  The trips we will have to make to pick them up and drop them off at the airport along with the trips to Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park so they can sight see will be financially difficult for us.  With only a handful of weeks until Christmas, it is hard to find the money for everything coming up!  But, we will make due.  To see them will be wonderful.  It is a reminder though to allow for the unexpected financial expenses in our budget.

Food is definitely more expensive for us on the road.  I do not buy bulk food like I did before.  When we are camped near a Sam's Club I will stock up on some items.  Where we are now it is over two hours to the closest grocery outlet.  By the time I pay for gas my saving on bulk groceries is gone.  Also, unless we are staying somewhere for a long time, I cannot haul heavy grocery items down the road.  Weight in a camper is an extremely serious issue.  A camper cannot go over the recommended weight set by the manufacturer   So, bulk food is not an option if we are going to be moving to another campground soon.

Hand-me-down clothes are not as easy to pass down as when we had a house.  So, I have to buy more than before.  Of course I buy a lot at used stores and sale items.

Camper maintenance can be less expensive one year and break the bank the next year.  This year has been a break the bank year.  We traveled in extremely hot weather from Missouri to Colorado in June.  The temps reached over 108 degrees so there is no telling what the temp of the black asphalt was.  It bubbled and warped our times. Then the winds picked up and blew our camper sideways.  That made the tires wear funny and eventually blew out two of them while traveling through the desert of Utah.

This terrible story will be in another post....soon.

With little room in the camper and a tight budget this Christmas season we will teach our kids how to enjoy the family time and tradition of the holidays.  We celebrate Advent and Jesse Tree.  We sing songs, play games, and craft.  Cookies are giving to anyone in the neighborhood that will eat them and snow angels are made in the smallest amount of the beautiful white powder.

For more on budgeting while traveling - visit our online magazine at 

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