Welcome back to Ben’s on the Road, where one brave Ben’s Bargains editor (me!) attempts to drive across the country with three kids aged five and younger, for as cheap as humanly possible.

Yesterday was my first day on this trip working a normal Ben’s work shift from the car. It’s pretty cool, actually, how easy it is to do my job from anywhere I want, including a moving minivan (my husband is driving; hopefully that is obvious!). My tech setup is not complicated: my Macbook Pro laptop, a power converter (so I can have my laptop plugged in and charging), a mobile hotspot, and my iPhone.

I’ve experimented with a bunch of different  hotspots and have found that if you’re going to be traveling cross-country, you really need to have the ability to connect to multiple service providers. They all have different areas where the signal is spotty or just nonexistent, so it works best to have more than one you can connect to. I have a Verizon pay-as-you-go 4G LTE hotspot, as well as my T-Mobile iPhone with unlimited data and tethering capabilities. Because my T-Mobile data is unlimited, I use that for WiFi whenever I can. Then if the signal goes weak, I switch over to my Verizon hotspot. I have used a prepaid AT&T hotspot before as well, but I wasn’t as happy with the speed/reliability on that one.

I bought my Verizon hotspot on clearance at Best Buy for $15 (it’s currently $50 online though). It’s called the Ellipsis Jetpack. I pay $100 for 10GB of data that needs to be used within 2 months. Because I also use my phone for WiFi, I shouldn’t have to refill the data at all over our 15-day trip.

To keep my laptop charged, I have this power converter for the car. You plug it into the cigarette lighter and it gives you two AC outlets and two USB outlets. Nothing fancy about this model, but it was like $20 and has worked just fine.

Add my beloved Macbook Pro (which is fancy and was not like $20!), and that’s all I need to work from the road. I feel pretty lucky I’ve got a job I can do from anywhere. And that I don’t get car sick!

Aside from a few 5 to 10 minute chunks of time where neither my phone or my hotspot had service, I have been able to stay connected really well! We just passed through the mountains in CO and I rarely lost connection even on the stretches of road between small mountain towns. Not bad!

We stayed with family close to Denver last night, and today we’re headed to a cabin near Capitol Reef National Park in Southern Utah. The drive has been absolutely gorgeous! Looking out the windows at the mountains is almost entertainment enough, but we also stopped off and spent some time in the little town of Idaho Springs. I love mountain towns, and this one was about as charming as they come. They have a nice park/playground right by the river, and a very unassuming and inexpensive taco joint called Del Rio Taco that had some of the best fish tacos I’ve ever had. You can sit outside on their patio and watch people rafting down the river below. If you’re ever in the area I highly recommend it!

I’m a sucker for a good photo opp, so a few hours later we also just pulled over on a random exit with a view, had a snack and snapped some pictures.

To find things like this to do when we need a break from driving, I use an iPhone app called Roadside America ($2.99). It uses your phone’s location to give you a list of “off beat” things to do close to the highway. I also like the app Roadtrippers (free!). With this one, you can see things to do, quick snacks, outdoor activities, etc, near your current location, or put in a specific route and see everything along the way on a map.

Tomorrow we’ll be exploring Utah and giving hiking with kids a try. I’m so excited to spend some time in an area I hear is just gorgeous. Watch for lots of pictures soon!

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Ben’s on the Road: Days 2 & 3

Welcome to the very first entry in our very first travel blog series! My name is Kristin, but if you’ve been around Ben’s at all, you might know me better as AgentK. For the last five years or so, I’ve spent a lot of time finding and posting deals for Ben’s, and by this point, I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at saving money online. But when we decided to hit the road for 15 days, and head for California with our three kids (5, 3, 10 months…yes we’re a little insane), I knew I was going to have to try and take my “bargain hunting” skills to a whole new level.

To clarify: this is not going to be a trip where “cheap” means picking a 4 star hotel over a 5 star, or going with Subway over Jimmy Johns for lunch. We’re talking let’s spend as close to $0 as possible each day, until we get to our destination. Basically, we can’t afford this trip. But because I believe you can’t put a price tag on making memories, we’re going to do it anyway…and just be really, really cheap about it.

Because technology is cool (and again, we’re on a major budget here), I will be working my regular hours for Ben’s the whole time we’re on the road. This will be my second long trip working remotely (we did a two week long trip to New Orleans last fall), and I have a lot of good tips to share on how to make it work, thanks to a lot of trial and error.

Anyway, I’m super excited to get out and see some parts of the country we haven’t seen before, and I hope you’ll follow along!

Our itinerary:
We’re leaving from Minneapolis, going as far as Southern California (Disney! LEGOLand!), and then heading back home again. Because we have small children with even smaller attention spans, we don’t plan on driving more than 6 hours total on any given day. Places we’ll be spending time along the way include Denver, Southern Utah, Las Vegas, and then on the way home we’ll hit the Grand Canyon, Albuquerque, and Kansas City.

Our car setup:
When we bought our minivan a couple years ago (I know, so lame, but have a few kids and you’ll get one too I promise), we purposefully didn’t get one with a built-in DVD/Blu-ray player because I knew as soon as we went there, I’d never talk to my children in the car again. But I am definitely not above keeping them entertained with movies on longer trips! So we have this super fancy setup for our vacation: a portable DVD player we found for $7 at Goodwill, mounted on top of a cooler (when I say I’m cheap, I’m not kidding!).

For sound, we have the DVD player plugged into the aux port of our car, and adjust the fade so that the sound only comes out of the back speakers (next to the kids). Up front, we have this Altec Lansing Solo Bluetooth Speaker ($15 in the pink color), mounted to the console with velcro 3M Command Strips. Allows us to listen to our own music or podcasts while the kids get their movies in the back.

Most of the movies we have at home are Blu-rays/digital copies, so we had fun picking out DVDs the kids hadn’t seen before at Goodwill in the weeks leading up to our trip (they’re $1.99 each there).

Food: We’re planning on eating sandwiches for lunch each day, so we brought loaves of bread, lunch meat, cheese, peanut butter and jelly, etc in a cooler and will picnic it up at rest stops or random parks along the way. We also made a huge batch of cold press coffee ahead of time and put it in an empty 2-liter soda bottle. As much as I’d like to hit up Starbucks drive throughs, this is much cheaper and probably tastes better!

Accommodations: We’re doing a mix of hotels, camping, staying with friends/family, and maybe even just sleeping in the van. Because we don’t know exactly when we’ll want to be done driving for the night (depends on how crazy the kids are being), we don’t book any hotels until like an hour before we arrive. More on this on another post, but we use Priceline Express to get cheap (under $75/night) rooms last-minute, and we also have a Priceline credit card that earns us points toward free stays. For me, half the fun of a road trip is not having solid plans and playing it by ear. It’s an adventure and I absolutely love it.

So day #1 is complete and we made it past the most boring part of the journey: through Iowa and part of Nebraska. Our stops included a rest area and, wait for it, Fleet Farm. Thrilling! Tomorrow we’ll get into Colorado and things should start to look a little more interesting.

Off to swim with the kids…check back tomorrow for a post about my “work from the car” setup, and more!

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Ben’s on the Road: Day 1

Summer is approaching: official road trip season! Whether you plan on traveling solo or with a van full of kids, here are some of the best apps to make sure your cross-country trip is a little easier, a bit more fun, and an experience you’ll never forget.

Getting There

iExit ($2.99, iOS or Android)

iExit tells you, in real time, when and where the nearest interstate exits are. It also tells you what you can expect to find at each exit (gas stations, lodging options, rest stops, restaurants, etc).

Gas Buddy (Free, iOS, Android)

A few cents difference per gallon might not seem like anything to worry about, but if you’re traveling thousands of miles it can add up super fast. This well-reviewed app will make it easy to find the cheapest fuel stops along the way to wherever you’re going.

Waze (Free, iOS, Android)

Waze is a navigation app sort of like Google Maps, but more user-based. In addition to giving you directions, it also shows real-time traffic updates provided by other Waze users. So if there’s heavy construction or an accident up ahead, you can find out before it’s too late and you’re stuck in the mess; especially helpful when you’re driving through an area you are completely unfamiliar with. There are rumors Facebook and Google are both trying to acquire it (for $1 billion!), so it must be pretty good.

In-Car Entertainment

Songza (Free, iOS, Android)

Good music is at the heart of any successful road trip; there’s just nothing like jamming out to your favorite tunes, windows rolled down, feet up on the dashboard. Songza is one of my favorite music apps because you can find playlists based on your mood/the occasion. They have lots of road trip mixes to choose from (Onward and Westward: Road Trip Music for the Prairies, Family Car Trip Mix, and 80’s One-Hit Wonders Road Trip Mix all sound pretty fun).

Stitcher Radio (iOS, Android)

For the intellectuals out there, this app gives you access to thousands of news shows  and podcasts (NPR, CNN, BBC, TedTalks, to name a few), and lets you “stitch” them together to make custom stations. A lot like Pandora, but for talk radio.

Road Trip Scavenger Hunt ($0.99, iOS, Android)

Here’s a nice little game for keeping kids entertained on long drives. For when you just can’t bear to listen to Finding Nemo playing from the back seat anymore.

FunBlast! Trivia (Free, iOS)

Really, any trivia app will do, as long as you have a friend/spouse/partner/whatever to play with.

Food and Out-of-Car Entertainment

Yelp (Free, iOS, Android)

The nice thing about the Yelp app is that it not only tells you where the nearest restaurants/bars are located, but whether or not they’re any good. Since it’s been around so long, lots of places have hundreds (some even thousands) of reviews. Even if it is sort of mandatory to have at least one really awful dining experience to laugh about, now they don’t all have to be bad. Here are 34 more food/restaurant apps worth checking out.

TapHunter (Free, iOS, Android)

One of my favorite My very favorite part of road tripping across the country is the chance the try local beers in a bunch of different cities. This app tells you the bars/brew pubs that have good craft beer on tap so you can plan your beer stops accordingly.

Oh, Ranger! Park Finder (Free, iOS, Android)

This app is great for when you just need a break from the car and the chance to stretch your legs. It not only shows you the closest parks, but tells you which ones are best for picnicking (or other activities), and which ones have playground for the kids to run around at.

Roadside America ($2.99, iOS)

This app tells you where all the weird/odd/hilarious roadside attractions are located along your route. Never miss another “world’s largest ball of twine” again.

Lodging

Camp Finder ($2.99, iOS, Android)

If you’re not planning on driving through the night, this is a great app for finding a place to pitch a tent. It shows state and national parks as well as privately owned campsites, and includes rates, user photos, reviews, and most importantly, how to get there from wherever you are.

Hotel Tonight (Free, iOS, Android)

There’s about a million hotel booking apps out there, but here’s one that offers deals on last-minute bookings — perfect for road trips where you can’t really know for sure when/where you’ll need a place to crash for the night.

Documenting all the Fun

Instagram (Free, iOS, Android)

If you don’t have Instagram already, it’s definitely a road trip (and life) must-have. I’ve tried a lot of different photo apps and, personally, I think Instagram is simply the best. Not only can you share your adventures with friends and family back at home, you can use the mapping feature to create a (literal) picture trail of your trip, and even easily make a photo book or memory box using all the photos you take. #Awesome.

Trip Journal ($2.99, iOS, Android)

Here’s a fun app that allows you to make a complete travel log of your trip, complete with geo-tagged photos and videos.

Diptic ($0.99, iOS, Android)

One of the best photo collage apps out there, Diptic lets you combine lots of individual pictures into one photo (so you don’t clog up everyone’s Facebook and Instagram feeds with your road trip pics). You can also add captions and filters. I have a couple free collage apps and, while they work, this one is definitely better (and well worth the extra dollar).

A Beautiful Mess ($0.99, iOS)

This is my favorite photo editing app for adding captions, borders and other little “extras” to my cell phone pictures. It’s consistently one of the top 20 paid apps for the iPhone, and will be available for the Android later this summer.

Hitting the Road? Here Are the Best Road Trip Apps