Starting to plan for the future years of great travel, and am looking for suggestions for a feasible, inexpensive way to do this.

Our ideas thus far include the following:

Rent a place for a month or so, but we like to see a lot and wonder if we'd feel too tied down always coming back to the same place each night. If we could find a convenient central location that would be helpful.

Rent a motor home, but not sure we'd feel comfortable driving something so large and towing along a car.

We love great scenery and hiking rather than being in cities if that helps with any suggestions.

Perhaps someone knows of a site that deals with this topic.

Do you have a home in a desirable location?

You could home swap or rent out your own home.

Friends that live in Manhattan are doing this. Renting out their apartment for two years and traveling the world.

Renting a motorhome for a month at a time would be VERY expensive. Renting one for a week to see if you would like that way of travel is a good idea. Have you ever considered towing a small trailer or maybe even a pop up trailer? They even have a hard sided trailer called a Hi Lo that lowers when traveling. Then you have the tow vehicle to go touring in for the day.

Utahtea

One fantastic summer we traveled with a camper. We only stayed in a place as long as we felt like it. It is very convenient to have all your things in one place. Our current camper is almost perfect without being too large but right now we only go on short trips. Our tow vehicle is a truck that is needed for work anyway. We are considering going to an area and working part-time, possibly a Workamper situation. (They have a website but most info requires a subscription.)
Retired friends rent a beach house near Wilmington NC. It is near family and the monthly rental is quite reasonable for the whole winter (about half the weekly summer rates!).
A month would not be too long in a place like New England. You might be able to get a reasonable summer rental in a furnished apartment that is normally rented to students. In a place like Concord NH there are apartment owners who specialize in short term rentals, usually people who have had a job transfer and need time before buying a house. You would only be one hour from the mountains but also plenty of local activities such as kayaking and biking.
Good luck! We hope to do a lot of traveling too.

Hi Clousie,
We live in UK, but for the last 4 years we have had 4 to 5 weeks vacation in USA every summer, so I have looked at this question in some detail myself.

Rent for a month is attractive if you can find the right place, both for property and location, but in the end you waste a hell of a lot of time and gas backtracking back to base. Also how far are you comfortable driving in a day and DOING SOMETHING WHEN YOU GET THERE. Whatever that distance is half it (round trip) and draw a circle that radius, centred on your proposed base, on the map. Does it take in all you wish to do in that area? I doubt it.

RV hire is expensive, the gas is horrendeous, and you still have hookups to pay for. Also there is little pleasure in nursing an RV round mountain roads in UT, CO, etc. Add a small car on a hitch behind and it gets worse.

I did an in depth costing, RV Vs Car plus hotel, a couple of years ago, when gas was still average about $1:40. For us the price was about equal, but we prefered the comfort of a car, a proper bathroom, and a real bed. Remember that we were coming from UK and RENTING the car, using your own car it becomes a no brainer!

If you use your own car; Priceline for hotels in the cities, and budget price motels in the rural areas, USA is one of the cheapest places in the World to travel, and in relative comfort too.

Enjoy your travels, Greybeard

When we researched renting an RV we found that it was cheaper to go anyplace in our own car, stay in inexpensive places, bring a cooler, eat inexpensively. Even the cheapest hotel room is bigger than any size RV you would be comfortable driving.

If it were me, I would get in my car, pick a destination at least 1000 miles away that I wanted to see, and then wander along slowly to that point - staying in local non-chain places, eating a local joints and civic and church ham and bean (or other) dinners, hitting local festivals that don't charge admission.

Outside of major cities, you can still get cheap clean hotel rooms for cheap (my husband just stayed at a Days Inn in Savannah - outside of the historic distric and across from a mall - for $53/night.) Breakfast can always be done cheap, bring a cooler for lunch and your major food expense is dinner.

Get someone to check on your home, deal with your mail, etc and then you can always stay someplace for a week or so if you like it. If you have adult kids, ignore them when they tell you that you are crazy.

Clouise, you may find this travel website informative, click on travel they also have a forum/message boards.

http://www.aarp.org/destinations/

I agree that renting an RV is very expensive -- for the cost, you could buy your own little trailer to hitch up to the car you already have, saving both rental fees and gasoline costs!

We do much the same as gail (until I bought an RV, that is), except that we do "picnics" for breakfast and supper, making lunch the main, restaurant meal of the day -- healthier and you can often get the same meal for less money, and/or have leftovers for supper.

Priceline and home exchanges are great ways to save big bucks if you're willing to be flexible and they fit your circumstances.

Once our destination is determined, I go to FreeTrip.com for routing, miles, time, and hotels in my price range. After deciding which hotels we are interested in, I call the AARP number to compare their rate with what I have already found. If AARP is higher, they will usually offer a rate lower than what the competitor quoted.

Most hotels, even the lower priced ones offer some sort of continental breakfast. If they don't, then we will buy buns, rolls etc. from a supermarket and use the in room coffee.
We carry a small cooler for our lunches, and stock up every couple of days at a supermrket. Taking a lunch break at interstate rest stops can be quite relaxing, and most are pretty decent.

Clousie, since taking an early retirement in 1995, my partner and I have been doing summer trips of 3 to 5 months each summer (we like escaping Florida in the summer -- so that's when we go). Most of our time has been spent in Europe, where until recently we felt we got more for our money than traveling in the states or Canada. In 2001 we spent five months driving to Alaska, making a huge circle from Florida, spending a month in NYC, then going to Maine, across Candada to Alaska, and heading down to California and back across the middle of the country -- 17,000 miles in all. But I'd never go the motor home route. I'm convinced that the costs including the rental or purchase, the hook-up fees, and most of all the fuel costs more than make up for the cost of motels along the way, where we personally feel more comfortable anyway.

We are torn between spending a month in one place or doing rentals of a week. Other than a couple of cities (NYC, LA, and SanFrancisco, primarily) there aren't many places we'd care to stay a month. But VRBO has many great rentals for just a week at a time, which become great savings over motels or hotels. On the other hand, rental costs for apartments usually come out so that if you were renting for three weeks, the fourth week to make a month rental is often free.

The idea of renting out your own home, or doing an exchange can be a great one, but certainly there are a lot of considerations to be made there first.

When I grow up, I want to be Patrick

"When I grow up I want to be Patrick"

Me too!!

I agree that RV'ing is not for everyone, but my in-laws have been doing it since retiring a couple of years ago and love every minute of it. They are really enjoying seeing the country, going where the weather is nice season to season, deciding what they want to do or see week to week, and the nice people they meet on the road. They are also finding it quite affordable.

They sold their house and everything they owned and just troll around in the RV all year. Whenever anyone asks my MIL what she plans to do the next day, her response is always, "Well, I know for sure that I'm going to make coffee."

We've been retired a dozen years which has included lots of travel. We do have a 26 ft. trailer pulled by a Suburban which has been fine, although we've also been in many hotels and B&Bs along with family stops.

Advantages to RVing include staying in beautiful state parks, reasonable camping rates, cooking on your own, relaxing in nature, a good bed (most RVs incl. fold downs have a solid Queen sized bed).

Advantages to moteling include proximity to cities and interstates, some good rates such as our Comfort Inn,
swimming pool, breakfasts if you like donuts and cereal. Of course, B&Bs have breakfast treats.

And then some of our friends are big into timeshares which is another dimension. Or some rent a condo in Florida or cabin in Wisconsin. So you just need to plan what suits you best. You could buy an RV and pulling vehicle and try it out, or maybe a pick up camper if that's your style for mobility.

Good luck. P.S. We've also done overseas travel and many Elderhostel programs.
Bill Longman, Missouri [email protected]

I on the other hand, DON'T want to be Patrick. We've spent over 5 weeks on the road and I prefer my OWN comfortable bed, my OWN pillow, my OWN clean sheets, my own bathroom instead of dirty gas station or rest area ones, my OWN cooking and I don't want to have to PACK AND UNPACK everytime we move. In otherwords, I LOVE my MOTORHOME!

I know that the RV lifestyle is not for everyone, but it can be pretty cheap after the intital purchase of the RV Example: Campground at Canyon de Chelly National Monument Campground is FREE, rooms at Thunderbird Lodge is $106. per night. RV's hold their resale value...just check on a used one!

With an RV you can spend nights in some of the most beautiful locations for a fraction of what a National Park Lodge would cost and eat with views that no resturant has. Gas can be expensive, but the longer you stay in one location with cheaper camping fees vs motel costs, cheaper grocery bills vs eatting out, then RVing can be as cheap or maybe even cheaper.

But as I mentioned, renting an RV is expensive!

Utahtea

I have nothing against motor homes, but they just aren't for me. And while some of "us" may not like packing and unpacking, I'll take that over having to wash my own dishes, wash my own sheets and remake my own beds, mop my own floors, scrub my own toilets, and fill my own gastank constantly while on the road anyday!

And another thing, while I enjoy the national parks, I prefer spending even more time in cities -- kind of hard to travel in a motor home to midtown Manhattan where we like to stay a month at a time. And they really frown on overnight RV parking at Union Square in San Francisco!

When my wife and I first began thinking about how to spend our retirement years, we initially thought we might purchase a townhouse or condo in either the Carmel/Pacific Grove or Laguna/Newport Beach areas and live there half of the year, remaining in our own home the other half. The surge of real estate prices in the last few years has ended that thought unless there is a drastic drop in values.

Currently we are thinking of renting someplace for a month in the Spring and Fall through VRBO or some other company. Possible places such as NYC, Carmel, Montreal, Vancouver, Paris, Vienna, Venice and Kyoto come to mind.

We thought we could settle in, take our time to see the main attractions as well as secondary sites one might like to see but wouldn't have the time for on a shorter visit. We could also get a feel for the neighborhood we are staying in and the pace of everyday life there. Day trips within a reasonable distance would also be possible.

I'm not sure how this will play out ten years from now or the reality of it, but that's our current plan anyway.

Even though I have fun camping, I am much more the Urban Vacation Girl than the National Park Vacation Girl with the exception of Statue of Liberty and a few other urban gems.

Thanks everyone for your comments so far. Please keep them coming.

Patrick, or anyone else who has rented from VRBO, I'm curious about this company. Have you had any problems, or is it a first-class organization? I've just spent the past half hour looking through their listings, and there appear to be some excellent rentals.
Do you know of other similar companies?

To be honest, I haven't yet rented from VRBO, but you aren't really renting from an agency, you are renting from the individual owners. It is only a listing organization. There have been many glowing reports on rentals from them, and only a few negatives, which usually seem to be that the renter didn't research enough.

In Europe I've mainly rented from individual owners -- some in those countries, others US owners I deal with here, but who own property in Europe. I've yet to have a problem.

I'm currently working on a month long rental in Manhattan for June and possibly one for Los Angeles in August. I've started with Google and found dozens of possible sites. I've also gotten good feedback here.

Is there a specific area you are looking for?

By the way, to those who say they want to be Patrick when they grow up, so do I. I'm just hoping I never grow up, though. LOL