There I was. Sitting with a well-thought-out and planned ultimate summer vacation for my family – a road trip to Maine! I’m excited to share my experiences with you so that you can plan your trip with ease and excitement. I’m based in Virginia so the planning involved in this trip was anything shy of easy, but completely worth it. I needed plans that would be fun for myself and my two kids.

TIME TO PLAN!

There were many factors I had to consider to bring this ultimate summer vacation road trip to Maine to fruition with excitement and success! First up…

Number Of Days For Road Trip To Maine And Back

Before I could jump on planning a road trip to Maine, I needed to consider:

1) how long did I want to be on this vacation, AND

2) how long will it take to get to Maine by car and back.

The total cost and activities available to us were all dependent on how many days I planned our road trip to Maine. The drive from Maine to back home would be a total of a solid 14 hours (no stopping in that calculation).

I wanted to create a road trip to Maine that allowed us to explore at our own pace; yet, have a route that would allow us the freedom of spontaneity as we saw fit!

Behind The Scenes Planning

• How long do I want us to stay in Maine?
• What would I like for us to see and do in Maine?
• Will we stop and overnight it in different states or rough it out and drive straight through? This one became obvious – we’re stopping! One driver and that was me. 😉
• What states do I want us to stay overnight?
• Where will we stay in each state?
• How many nights do I want us to stay in each state?
• What kind of activities are offered in each state for fun? This was also a determining factor in where we would stay. If I didn’t find anything that I thought we would like to stay, I did not consider that state as a possibility.
• What about the road trip back – Do I want to stay overnight on the way back or get it over with and be home already?

As a single mom, it was super important to me to consider all bases. This was the first long-distance road trip I ever considered for the three of us and I wanted to make it happen. I wanted us to experience the ultimate summer vacation road trip to Maine. It was important to have everything established to feel safe in my plans for our road trip.

Costs

Here are the areas I considered for costs and included in my vacation budget. Looking back on this road trip to Maine, I came home with a savings of $500 of unspent funds. I found the food and activities in New England to be fairly reasonable and leaning more on the inexpensive side of costs.

Auto

I ensured that my car had an oil change and safety inspection done prior to this trip. A drive from Virginia to Maine, even when stopping overnight in different locations is a lot to ask of my car. I checked to make sure everything in my car emergency kit was operable and not expired. My estimates in this category included costs for fuel, tolls, and ferry fees for our road trip to Maine. I used an online fuel cost trip calculator to give me a good estimate on what my fuel would cost me to and from Maine and all the off-route driving in-between.

Food

Then there were the food costs. Now this was an area I needed to address.Driver’s gotta eat. Kids gotta eat. I did NOT want to be that hangry momma driver or hangry kids. Haha. I wanted to make sure I was not spending an unnecessary amount of money at gas stations for snacks and/or fast food stops. My desire was to conserve my money for our FUN! The calculations for food expenses including us eating out at least twice a day (lunch, dinner) since those tend to be more expensive. We were going to Maine and my daughter and I LOVE lobster. Therefore, I calculated nightly lobster meal dinners for two. There was no way I was going to drive through New England and NOT eat fresh lobster!!! I also bought this 90qt igloo cooler packed with fruit, veggies, sandwiches, and water bottles.

We traveled during one of the hottest months of the summer, July. I made sure we had ice in the cooler at all times to keep everything fresh. We added ice to the cooler about every 2 days. Some days I would buy extra ice just because it was THAT hot and I wanted to make sure our food stayed fresh.

Where To Stay

Next up was a very important cost to consider. I selected the states to stay in overnight which meant the next step was to find a place for us to stay in these states. I personally LOVE AirBnBs! They’re my go-to on most of my vacations. I like the accessibility to having an entire home with all the necessities available to my family and me AND I find the cost to be better than hotel stays (in most cases). When determining which AirBnB for us to stay, I considered the activities I planned and mapped out how far of a drive we were from them to see if it made sense.

Here are the AirBnBs we stayed in based on our overnight stays in these states.

1. West Haven, CT
2. Providence, RI – coming soon
3. Portland, ME – coming soon
4. Lamoine, ME – coming soon

Activities

This is the fun part of the planning process for our road trip to Maine. I researched multiple activities for each state on our route to see where the FUN activities were! Costs in this category included any ticket purchases, event parking, and rental fees for equipment.

Souvenirs

I don’t typically buy souvenirs on my trips to be perfectly honest. I prefer the experiences over any physical object unless I see something that I cannot get back home. However, my two kids love souvenirs and I ensured my budget included the option to get whatever souvenir they liked at any stop.

Ready to Hit The Road

“Life is a grand adventure. Go live it.”

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XO, Christine