Have you ever though it would be nice to visit the Nation's Capital, but I certainly can't afford to do that? Have you wondered how you could afford to go to some of the Nation's Best Museums? We managed a trip for 4 days, and 3 nights to our Nation's Capital this August for only $561.19! How you might ask?First of all, yes, you have to be willing to rough it a little. We didn't stay at a 4 star hotel, we stayed at a million star vista. Greenbelt National Park http://www.nps.gov/gree/index.htm. We registered online at the link above for only $16 a night! So for 4 nights we paid $64 that's it!!! It is a very private campground. Accommodations are not glamorous, the bathrooms could have been better, but they certainly were not the worst bathrooms we've ever seen while camping. There were flush toilets, and showers, but there were also cobwebs and a few spiders. You can only have tents and small campers at the location and there is not any electric or water hook ups. As far as activities at the camp site, there was only hiking. We were only there to sleep and cook our meals, so we didn't really need a pool or other things to keep us entertained.
Traveling around town is also an issue in DC. We drove 5 minutes down the road to the Greenbelt Metro stop. The Metro is really the only way to get around DC. The cost was $4.75 a day to park, but on weekends it's free! We did buy the all day passes on the weekends as well as on the Monday we went into town. The all day passes run $7.80 but allow you to get on and off the trains at any location all day long. The only catch is on Monday-Friday the passes are not good until after 9:30 am. Regardless, these passes allowed us to move freely around the city and take in many sites without having to walk all the way back to the stop we had gotten off at to begin with. Total cost for 3 days use of the Metro $97.85.So how about tours? We took this trip with our 7 and 9 year old children. The main thing they were interested in seeing was the things that were shown in the Night At the Museum Battle of the Smithsonian Movie. That meant the FREE museums! They also wanted to see the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and of course the White House. We wanted to at least stand in the street and yell at the Capital building as Josh Lyman does on the West Wing. http://westwingonline.net/. All of which cost us nothing. We thought about going on a tour before we went, but we weren't sure which day we'd want to go, and we definitely didn't want to pay a ton of money for a tour and have the kids not get anything out of it. In looking up info on the DC area I came across the DC by Foot tours. These tours are FREE! http://dcbyfoot.com/ They include info on the White House, Capital, Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial, WWII Memorial, Vietnam Wall, and the Lincoln Memorial. They are full of interesting facts that keep all ages engaged. They meet on the Corner of 15th and Constitution and then walk with you to the different venues ending at the Lincoln Memorial. At the end they accept tips. I'm sure you could get away with paying nothing, we did give $10.00, which really $2.50 a person is a steal! It is a walk, but if you were going to see those sites anyway why not do it with a tour guide for little to no cost. Our guide was wonderful! He was a retired teacher/principal and our son quickly became his little shadow for the whole tour. He didn't seem to mind at all, and answered all of his questions as we went along.
We also took in the National Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, the American History Museum, the Portrait Gallery and the National Zoo. All for FREE!! Don't forget if you are going to DC to head to the Old Post Office for the best views of the city with the shortest lines! Again it's...FREE!
Eating is always a concern when you are out and about in a different city. We decided to go as cheap as we could in this department too. The first day we ate breakfast on the road at McDonald's. We had coupons so this cost only $11.93 for four of us. We ate a picnic lunch half way to DC and then ate Skyline Chili, and Hot Dogs for dinner. We of course also enjoyed bear claws and smores around the campfire. The next morning we ate muffins at the campsite, headed in to DC with back packs with various snacks and 2 bottles of waters. We did splurge on a coke at the Portrait Gallery for $3.00. We then enjoyed an amazing dinner at our friends house in Maryland. Sunday morning we again had breakfast at the campsite, packed up a few more snacks and headed back into DC. This is the day we did the DC by Foot tour and we were so hot we had to have an ice cold water and the kids wanted Popsicles. This ran $9.00 from a street vendor. In addition to the $2.00 coke we bought earlier in the day so we'd have change for the tip at the end of our tour. We did decide to splurge once again on lunch at the National Air and Space Museum's McDonald's. Of course this ran $23.95! We did discover that we could keep the 2 pop cups and store them in our backpack, empty of course without being crushed by slipping our water bottles into them. We were then able to come back and refill our drinks and enjoy them several times while we were in the museum. This defiantly saved us several dollars! We headed back to the campsite in time for a dinner of taco helper. On Monday we also packed snacks and water. Again we bought a drink at the American History Museum. We saved our cup from the $3.00 drink, and refilled it 3 times in the American History Museum and 3 times in the Natural History Museum. We ended the day on Monday at the campsite with leftovers from the previous meals. On Tuesday we headed home stopping at Atlanta Bread Company for breakfast, Subway for lunch and then home for pizza at Georgio's. The cost for these three meals combined was $34.32. Adding in about $75.00 in groceries an additional $19.84 for ice brings the food grand total to $182.84.
We spent $91.89 on gas for the trip, and feeling like we had kept under our budget amount allowed for souvenirs to be purchased totaling $74.61. I also spent an additional $40 on photo processing and album supplies from Creative Memories of course! And 1 week after the trip had a beautiful album complete and ready to remind us of the great time we had.
This brings the grand total to $561.19! I'm not sure you could plan to see as much as we did in 3 days with four people anywhere else for as cheap! Going to Washington DC in August was a lot of fun. The only thing we'd do differently is pick a different time of year, simply as August is perhaps one of the hottest months to visit the Nation's Capital. Will we go back again, definitely there is still so much to see.
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