Planning a vacation soon? Looking to avoid expensive hotels in favor of more private, less costly accommodations? That’s generally why people book AirBnB rentals or other vacation homes on sites like VRBO. Of course, staying in an AirBnB is not exactly like staying in a hotel.

While some AirBnB locations have lots of extra amenities, many do not. You have to be careful to book places that list most of your wants, but even that might not be enough. Here’s a list of ten items that can come in handy when traveling to a new AirBnB location:

1. A Streaming Stick for Netflix / Hulu / etc…

The vast majority of AirBnB locations have access to a Wi-Fi signal, but not all locations offer access to smart televisions or streaming hardware. Heck, I recently stayed in an AirBnB in San Francisco that didn’t even have HD channels activated on their TV, despite their cable box having a HDMI port.

The easiest way to get around this problem is to bring your own streaming stick. You won’t have to bother logging into the streaming services; you simply connect to the Wi-Fi network and stream! The most popular options for portability are the Roku Streaming Stick and the Fire TV streaming stick; both relatively inexpensive and include 4K hardware options if desired.

Check out Roku Streaming Sticks / Check out Fire TV Sticks

2. A Carbon Monoxide Detector

Leaning towards better safe than sorry (and avoiding this tragic event), packing a carbon monoxide detector is not a bad idea. While the vast majority of AirBnB locations will include smoke alarms, it’s possible that your area of a home or guest house won’t include a carbon monoxide detector.

This can be particularly problematic when staying in a foreign country that has less stringent laws about protecting people from dangerous carbon monoxide levels. You can typically battery powered carbon monoxide detectors for around $20 to $30 on Amazon or more compact handheld versions from $80 to $100.

Check out Carbon Monoxide Detectors on Amazon

3. The Good Toilet Paper

Toilet paper quality in an AirBnB can really be hit or miss. I’ve stayed in expensive entire home rentals serving up 1-ply sandpaper and inexpensive 1-room rentals that offer the softest Charmin rolls available. It probably has to do with hosts hiring property managers to mange their AirBnB rentals, which brings cost cutting measures.

So you can either toss a roll into your luggage or get a more portable solution like StallMates. The same advice goes for tissues as some AirBnB locations don’t offer them, assuming guests will want to blow their nose in that horrible, scratchy toilet paper, I suppose.

Check out Toilet Paper Deals on Amazon

4. Comfy Footwear

House slippers, flip-flops, non-skid socks, whatever floats your boat! When you are staying in a place that has hardwood / cement floors and you are used to carpet at home, packing something to keep your feet warm and protected from flooring irregularities is a good idea.

 Check out Comfy Footwear on Amazon

5. An Expanded Charging Plug with USB ports

When hosts turn older homes into AirBnB locations, one of the biggest problems is trying to find enough plugs to charge all your devices. Solve this problem yourself by bringing a travel charger with additional plugs and USB ports.

This compact Belkin charger is pretty handy with 3 plugs, 2 USB 2.1A ports and surge protection. If you need something larger, Belkin makes a 6-plug port that’s roughly the same price as well. There’s also a number of options on Amazon that don’t offer surge protection.

 Check Amazon for Charging Plugs Deals

6. A Washcloth

If you prefer to wash your face off with a washcloth or use it in the shower to clean yourself, consider bringing it with you. I’ve found the vast majority of AirBnB locations offer towels and hands towels, but not always washcloths.

Perhaps it’s considered more of a personal item? In any case, pack an extra one or a shower loofah if you prefer that. The same advice goes for beach towels, if your AirBnB location offers access to a pool.

Check Amazon for Washcloth / Loofah Deals

7. NightLight(s)

If you wake up in the middle of the night to make a trip to the bathroom, it would be good to know which way to go if unfamiliar with the bedroom layout in your groggy, sleepy state. You can get packs of these on Amazon for less than $20, ideal if you want to light the way to and from areas of the home. Obviously, good for kids as well.

Check Amazon for Nightlight Deals

8. K-Cups / Sweetener / Tea

If your AirBnB advertises a Keurig machine, bring your favorite K-Cups with you. It’s better to have a few on hand instead of heading out to the grocery store to buy an entire box, then leaving it behind because it won’t fit in your suitcase.

The same advice does for tea bags, sweetener or even condiments. I once stayed in an AirBnB that only offered rock candy sugar sticks for sweetening my coffee. That’s cute, but not practical. A few packs of Splenda would have done the trick and made me happy.

Check Amazon for K-Cup Deals

9. A Wine Opener

If you like to pop open a bottle of wine after a long day, it’s a terrible feeling when you have to go back out searching for a wine opener instead of relaxing in your AirBnB. There are plenty of hosts that do offer one, but it may not be included if there’s no kitchen access. Just bring your own.

Check Amazon for Wine Opener Deals

10. Laundry Pods / Dryer Sheets

If your AirBnB host offers access to a washer / dryer set and you are staying over a week or two, then consider packing a few laundry pods / & dryer sets. That way, you can avoid purchasing them at the store and having to leave a box behind.

This also helps you pack less and avoid additional baggage fees at the airport, since you can simply re-wear outfits after washing. You can also just pack a bit of detergent in a zip-lock bag, if you prefer the powder over pods.

Check Amazon for Laundry Pod Deals

10 Things you may want to Bring when Staying in an AirBnB

After two weeks, 13 states, and a blur of fun, we’re about five hours from home again! The drive through the southwest–Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, wasn’t as exciting as the drive down to California, but it was still pretty cool to experience yet another part of the country I have never been to before.

First up, Albuquerque. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but it felt very…Breaking Bad. Our hotel ended up being kind of a dump, and didn’t feel like it was in the greatest part of town, so we decided to drive to one of the many local breweries in the area. When all else fails, grab a beer, right?

These smaller breweries are kind of hit or miss in my opinion, but La Cumbre was great. If you ever find yourself there, the Elevated IPA is excellent!

The next day we made the long, kind of boring drive through the rest of New Mexico and into Amarillo, TX, where we had to stop at Cadillac Ranch.

Yes, Cadillac Ranch is literally a bunch of old cars sticking of the dirt in a cornfield off the side of the interstate. We bought some spray paint from a guy at the entrance selling it out of his car, and got to be graffiti artists for about 15 minutes.

America: weird and awesome.

That night we made it to middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, then drove to Kansas City the next day. My husband heard about this popular Kansas City BBQ joint on one of his cooking shows (PBS’ The Mind of a Chef), and we had to stop for dinner.

Joe’s is inside a gas station, but the line was out the door! They were sadly sold out of the “burnt ends” we were hoping to try (apparently, it’s some kind of Kansas City specialty), but the food we did get was delicious!

Now that our trip is almost over, I can share more about what has worked well, and what we’ll try to change the next time we hit the road.

The Good

1. My remote work setup. Amazingly, I was able to work most of my normal hours for Ben’s during the two weeks we were on our trip! I took one Friday off, and cut back on some of my evening hours, but for the most part I was able to stick to my usual schedule. The only spot where I couldn’t get any WiFi signal was about a 3 hour stretch between Utah and Las Vegas. There were other areas where I’d lose service for a few minutes at a time, but for the most part, I was able to stay connected really well using my Verizon hotspot.

2. Last minute hotels. We originally thought we’d save money and camp for some of the nights on our trip, but it ended up being easier (and really not much more money), to just do Priceline Express deals. Campsites seemed to cost close to the same as cheap hotels, and because we made sure we always stayed somewhere with free breakfast , we never had to worry about finding food in the mornings. Also, having a pool meant “free” entertainment for the kids; we’d let them swim in the morning so they were nice and tired for the upcoming car ride!

I definitely recommend using the Priceline App for finding hotels from the road. One really helpful feature is that you can pull up a map using your current location, and see the prices for hotels in the area. There were lots of instances where we’d look up a city we were close to, then look another 20 minutes or so up the map, and the second area would have much lower average prices.

They also make it really easy to filter by amenities. We always wanted a pool, free WiFi, and free hot breakfast. Outside of that, we didn’t really care, so we’d just pick the cheapest Express option (where you don’t get the name of the hotel until you confirm your reservation). I think the cheapest hotel we stayed at was $35, and the most expensive was $70. You’d be surprised at how many decent hotels you can find along the freeway for under $50 a night (including breakfast!).

3. The car setup. Our cheap portable DVD player was pretty much the hero of this trip! The movies kept the kids entertained (and quiet), which kept the grownups sane. I don’t even want to think about how people used to do long car trips with children before this technology existed! If you can’t find one at Goodwill, you can find them as low as around $40 on Amazon. Totally worth it.

4. The route. Driving 5-6 hours a day felt about perfect. We’d drive 2-3 hours in the morning, stop for lunch, then just have another 2-3 hours to get where we were going. Breaking it up like that kept us all from going crazy in the car. Getting down to CA was also just a really neat stretch of America. It was really cool to see the country change from farmland, to mountains, to rocky, to desert, to coastal as we traveled.

Things I’d Do Differently Next Time

1. Do a better job packing. We brought along two huge suitcases: one for me and my husband, and one for all three kids. It ended up being a big pain having to drag them into wherever we were staying every night, then repack and bring them back out to the car in the morning. Next time I think we’ll come up with some kind of a system where we divide things into 2-3 day packs, and include clothes for everyone in the same bag (so we only have one smaller clothes bag to bring in at a time).

2. Pack less. Ok so kind of the same as the point above, but really, you should see our van right now. I brought along full-size bottles of shampoo and conditioner, forgetting that we’d be able to collect a million little bottles at the hotels along the way. I let the kids bring toys, and they got lost/buried on the floor of the car on the first day. We brought all sorts of stuff we didn’t really need, like pillows, that just took up a lot of space. You forget that you’ll be driving though towns with Targets and Walmarts, and if you need something you can always buy it.

3. Look into gas rewards programs/credit cards. We spent a lot of money on gas on this trip, and I stupidly didn’t even think about how we could have saved some money by signing up for “loyalty” gas station programs or by getting a credit card that offers a percentage back on gas purchases. Could be a good way to cut down the total cost of the trip even more.

4. Dedicate more time to Disneyland. We spent a full 12 hours at Disney, and I feel like we hardly made a dent in it. If I were to do it over again, I’d set aside at least one more day for Disney, and ideally do California Adventure too, because it looked really fun!

Overall, I am so glad we decided to get in the car and go. This trip has been epic and I’ll never forget it.

Where to next: East Coast? Down South? If you have any suggestions or road trip experiences to share, please drop them in the comments!

Ben’s on the Road: Days 12 & 13

The drive from Southern CA to the Grand Canyon was an adventure of the best kind. One of the reasons I prefer road trips to flying somewhere for vacation, is that when you fly, you miss all the random gems that lie hidden between home and your destination.

If we’d have flown to California, we would have never ended up at the kind of dumpy, but weirdly charming Desert Hot Springs Spa Hotel in Desert Hot Springs, for example.

We saw “hot springs” and “$65” on Priceline and thought “hey why not!” Little did we know Desert Hot Springs holds the prestigious title of “Worst City to Live in California” and was not exactly the charming spa destination we’d seen in the photos online. The hotel looked like something straight out of National Lampoon’s Family Vacation. Pink and teal decor, a ceiling that looks like it might cave in at any moment, a “room service” menu printed on plain white copy paper and stapled together in the corner. I’m guessing it was pretty swanky in about 1970, and hasn’t been updated since.

But honestly it ended up providing us with one of the best nights of the trip so far! The kids had eight hot springs pools of varying temperatures to play in, we met some super nice and eccentric people (my favorite being a very friendly older woman who kept going on and on about how these waters were the best in the entire world and had the power to heal paraplegic children or something like that); we all got an experience.

The next morning we drove through the desert for what seemed like forever. There was literally nowhere to stop, nothing to see, and then a random thing like this would appear on the side of the road:

Literally a fence with hundreds of pairs of shoes hanging on it. I have absolutely no idea what it is or what it means, but it was weird and cool and just the kind of thing I wanted to see on our trek across the country.

After hours of driving with nowhere to stop, everyone was hungry and cranky. Just as we were about to finally turn off onto an interstate where we were sure there’d be a Subway or something to stop at, we saw a sign for Pirate’s Cove Resort and Restaurant. My son is currently pirate-obsessed so we decided to follow the sign and check it out.

The food was not great, and it was overpriced, but they had paper pirate hats, and silly pirate statues, and it was the perfect little break from the car.

Our next stop was the Grand Canyon. I had never seen it before, and had been told the best experience would be to hit it at sunrise. Well, we were staying about an hour away from it that night, and waking up at like 5AM the next morning to drive up there was, um, not going to happen. So we decided to hustle and attempt to make it there by sunset that evening.

We were racing against the clock, driving over the speed limit, watching it get closer and closer to 7:09PM. We got into the National Park with a few minutes to spare, parked, basically dragged the kids up to the closest lookout point, and…it was incredible.

It’s really not possible to capture the beauty of this thing in a picture (especially an iPhone picture!), but the colors were truly amazing. I’m sure it’s also pretty cool at noon, or 5, or whatever time you go, but seeing it at sunset was worth the rush.

So this whole post is basically me, convincing you, that you must do a road trip. Yes, we’re tired. No, you can’t see the floor of our van. Yes, there has been a lot of driving and fighting and “are we there yets.” But honestly it’s all been totally and completely worth it so far.

As I write this, we’re about two hours from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I have no idea what you do in Albuquerque (aside from drive around looking for places in Breaking Bad?), but I can’t wait to find out!

Ben’s on the Road: Days 10 & 11 (or something)

I was doing a good job keeping track of what day we were on for awhile there, but now we’re definitely at the point where the days are blurring together and I have no idea how long we’ve been on the road: just that it feels like it’s been forever!

So Disney was definitely our main California attraction, but it wasn’t the only thing we came here to see. I was actually probably the most excited about the beaches, and they certainly delivered!

The first beach we visited was in Ventura. It’s about a two hour drive from where we were staying with friends (actually a fellow Ben’s editor and his family!). We were there on a Friday, and the beach was surprisingly not crowded at all! We had the best time playing in the water and watching people surf.

Our second beach day was spent in Oceanside. We ended up there because it was close to LEGOLAND and we got a nice Priceline Express deal on a hotel there. I am so glad we stumbled upon it! Such a beautiful beach and adorable little town. I’ve been waiting and hoping to see a beach sunset on this trip and boy did I get one in Oceanside! It was a night I won’t soon forget.

I also got to check another item off my list of must-do California experiences in Oceanside: fish tacos on the beach!

There’s just nothing like being at the ocean. We’re leaving with a van full of sand, and lots of happy memories.

While the beaches were kind of my thing, LEGOLAND was the part of California my 5 year old was most excited about. It was no Disneyland, but it was actually a lot of fun. Definitely geared toward younger kids, which actually worked out well for our family.

If you ever decide to visit LEGOLAND, you can basically always find a couple that gets you a free kids’ ticket with each adult ticket you buy. Just google “BOGO Legoland tickets” and you’ll find a code you can redeem at their discount website. Weirdly, you had to do a separate transaction for each free ticket though; so if you have two kids, you have to buy one adult/kid pair with the coupon, then start over and buy the second adult/kid pair with the same coupon.

Like Disneyland, you can pay extra once you get inside the park to do their version of the FastPass thing (allows you to skip to the front of the line for some rides), but we didn’t bother. The lines are much shorter than Disney and it didn’t seem necessary or worth it. Also like Disneyland, you can bring in snacks and drinks, which I definitely recommend doing!

The kids had a lot of fun on the rides, but I thought the coolest part was the Miniland area. Just tons and tons of awesomely huge and intricate LEGO versions of well-known cities, buildings and landmarks to marvel at.

They also had an entire area dedicated to Star Wars LEGO builds! So you know we spent a lot of time there!

My son really wanted to stay at the attached LEGOLAND hotel, but it was super expensive. We made a deal and told him he could pick out any LEGO set he wanted from the massive lego shop for under $50 and we’d stay somewhere cheaper. He was completely happy with that arrangement, and we definitely still came out ahead money wise. Win/win!

If you ever go, I thought the best rides were LEGO Ninjago: The Ride, The Dragon (a fun kid-friendly dragon rollercoaster), and the Royal Joust Ride. Actually, all of the Castle Hill area was pretty great.

I’m really sad to say goodbye to Cali. We’re already scheming ways to make a kid-free long weekend happen someday—maybe when Star Wars Land opens in a couple years!

For now it’s onto Arizona and the Grand Canyon. Stay tuned!

Ben’s on the Road: California Love

Yesterday, after 2,000 miles and a week on the road, we made it to Disneyland! It was crowded, it was hot, it was crazy expensive…but man it was fun! We hit it hard for about 12 hours and were able to experience all the rides I’ve been wanting to go on since I was a kid: Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Teacups, Indiana Jones. Like they say, dreams do come true!

This was our first time doing Disney, and while I’m certainly no expert yet, we did learn some good tips and tricks for making the most of our limited time and budget. Here are some of them:

Download the Disneyland App

What did people do before smartphones?! Certainly not enjoy their first time at Disney, because without the Disneyland app, I’d have been completely lost and overwhelmed with this place!

Before you go, set up an account and buy your tickets right from the app. I asked around, read all sorts of stuff online, and there’s really no legit way to get discounted Disneyland tickets, unless you’re willing to “borrow” some random person from Craigslists’ season passes for a fee, which you know, doesn’t sound like a great idea. When we got to the park entrance, there was a huge line at the ticket booth, but if you purchased tickets from the app, you could go right up to the entrance and they just scanned a barcode from your phone. Trust me, there are plenty of lines inside the park; you don’t want to add to it before you even get in!

Another nice thing about the app is that it shows you the approximate wait times for the rides around you. I didn’t find it to be completely accurate, but it was super helpful just to gauge what had a “short” wait vs a “long” wait; if something said it had a 15 minute wait, we knew it’d be under 30 minutes, where a ride with a listed 50 minute wait was one we’d for sure want to set up a FastPass for (see below!).

Pay extra for the MaxPass Tickets

Apparently this is a new thing (July 2017), but you can pay an extra $10 per ticket for the MaxPass experience. Basically, it allows you to sign up for FastPasses from the Disneyland app, and it also gives you unlimited PhotoPass downloads for your stay. It was totally worth it in my opinion! FastPasses allow you to skip to the front of the line on popular rides, and without the MaxPass thing, you have to actually show up at the rides, get a physical FastPass ticket, then arrive back again at your designated time. MaxPass allows you to sign up for FastPasses from your phone, from anywhere, which is obviously much easier!

The PhotoPass thing was actually pretty amazing too. Throughout the park there are Disney photographers who take pictures for you, and if you have the PhotoPass, they scan a barcode on your phone, and the pictures show up on the app. Then you can save them, share them, etc, for free!

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time we got a family picture that wasn’t a selfie. It was really awesome that we could ask one of the Disney photogs to take our picture and it just showed up a few minutes later on my phone! They were located at the castle, all of the character meet & greets, and other popular photo spots. When you’re already paying $100+ a ticket, adding another $10 for this plus the mobile FastPasses really seems like a no-brainer to me.

Buy Disney Souvenirs and Pins Before You Go

My parents went to Disney World a couple months ago and gave us this great tip: buy trading pins on eBay before your trip. No idea what trading pins are? That’s okay, neither did I, but it’s definitely a thing! Basically, people trade officially licensed Disney pins with the cast members at Disneyland; if someone working at the park has a pin you like, they have to trade you for it if you ask them to. You can purchase these pins inside the park (for a lot of money of course), but you can also just buy big lots of them on eBay for super cheap. We bought 25 for around $12 before we left. We divided them up and put them on lanyards, and the kids had a lot of fun trading them for new ones during our day at Disney.

This may sound weird, but we also bought the kids some “souvenirs” before we even got to Disneyland. I knew my daughter was going to want something Moana-related, so the night before we went, we gave her a  Moana Heart of Te Fititi necklace that we bought from Walmart for $5. Same necklace will cost you $20 inside Disney! So many of the stuffed animals, costumes, toys, etc, you can find at Target, Walmart, or Amazon for so much less. Just secretly pack them into your backpack and pull them out inside the park of you want to save some money!

Do the Jedi Training!

I’m a pretty big Star Wars nerd. So when I heard there was a “Jedi training” kids could do, I knew we had to do it. It’s about an hour time commitment, but it was super awesome. Definitely a highlight of the day!

Kids have to be at least four years old (bummer for my 3 year old daughter!), and you have to pre-register. You sign up at the Star Wars Launch Bay entrance in Tomorrowland for the time slot of your choice. Everyone said spots go super fast, but we showed up at around 1PM and there were plenty of tickets left for the 4:30 slot. The whole experience was super fun, and my son was beaming for hours after it was over. They even get a cool “Future of the force” button at the end, and the whole thing doesn’t cost any extra money!

Pack Your Own Food

Did you know you can bring food and drinks into Disney? If you’re going to be carrying a backpack anyway, definitely pack your meals! We brought in sandwiches for lunch, but I ended up wishing we’d brought something for dinner, too! The food you can buy there is okay, but it’s expensive (shocking!). I bought a salad for dinner, and it was like $12, and not anything to write home about. Honestly, my kids were so excited to get to the next ride, they didn’t want to spend a lot of time eating meals anyway. I would suggest food you can eat while walking–sandwiches, granola bars, string cheese, etc. Then if you want to splurge on some fun treats, you won’t feel guilty for spending the money.

Don’t Go on a Saturday

So we actually did go on Saturday, but I kind of wish we hadn’t! Everyone I talked to said it was crazy busy that day, and blamed it on the fact that it was a Saturday. Without FastPasses, all the popular rides had super long wait times (some an hour+), and it was just hard to walk with the huge crowds of people everywhere. Going on a Saturday didn’t ruin our trip, but if you have any choice in the matter, I’d say aim for a weekday.

Bring Extra Phone Power

So I’ve mentioned how awesome the Disneyland app is, but it drains your phone battery pretty fast. And when you’re at the park for 12 hours like we were, that means a dead phone long before you leave. I really wished I would have brought an external battery pack or charger case! Learn from my mistake, and make sure you plan ahead.

Research the Rides and Make a List Before You Go

I usually prefer to just wander around and go on rides that look cool as I see them, but that tactic just doesn’t really work at Disney. You could easily spend a week there, so if you have just one day, you really need to plan and prioritize. Also, a lot of the rides have pretty lax height restrictions compared to other theme parks I’ve visited, so I (wrongly) assumed if my 3 year old was tall enough to go on something, it couldn’t be too scary. For example, I didn’t even know what Space Mountain was, other than that it was supposed to be awesome, which resulted in one kid hiding in my lap, the other begging “Mommy hold me!!”, and this hilarious picture:

Overall, Disneyland left me wanting more, more, more. The lines were long, but the rides themselves were also longer than any other rides I’ve ever gone on. I also loved that most of them allowed you to bring you baby along on your lap; this meant that we could go on a lot of the rides together as a family. It proved itself to be the place with the longest lines on earth, but really, the happiest place on earth.

Ben’s on the Road: Disneyland!

Well, we haven’t turned the car around and driven home yet (despite threatening it a few times), so I’m calling this trip a major win so far!

The last couple days have been spent time in Capitol Reef National Park in Utah, and Las Vegas. One was beautifully remote, the other was basically the opposite, but both were a lot of fun.

I have never been to Utah before, and the drive into the area we were staying was one of the most interesting 5-6 hours of my life. It seemed like with every turn the scenery completely changed. By the time we got into the national park, it was so cool I was definitely definitely doing that “KIDS LOOK OUT THE WINDOW HOW DO YOU NOT THINK THIS IS AS AMAZING AS I DO” thing that my own parents used to do on vacation. I get it now, Mom. It’s really awesome!

We were lucky enough to get to stay at a friends’ beautiful family cabin about 15 minutes from the national park. We spent a day hiking with the kids, and it went really well. A lot of the hikes were pretty short, and while they took you up to some amazing views, they were totally doable with young children. The great thing about national parks is that they make it super easy to explore an area (safely!). All the foot paths are marked and you can just park your car right at the beginning and take off.

If you ever find yourself in at Capitol Reef, there’s a really cute place within the park called Gifford Homestead that has ice cream for $1 (seriously, what can you buy for $1 these days?). The pie was awesome too!

After Utah, we hit the road again. The drive from Utah to Las Vegas was another beautiful one, but the first half of it put a major kink in my working from the road plan. I had no idea there was so much remote “dead” space in the area!At one point, we literally had to stop and wait for a cow to cross the road, so yeah, I had no service at all on either of my devices. If/when we do a trip like this again, I’ll have to be better about looking ahead to see how much “stuff” is around the routes we’re taking, and plan on being without WiFi when it looks remote.

Once we got back on the interstate, it was a pretty fast drive to Las Vegas. I’ve been to Vegas a few times, pre-kids, and distinctly remember saying “this would be the last place I’d ever want to bring my kids!” Well, I still don’t think I’d ever choose to do a full Vegas vacation with the kids, but 20 hours there was about perfect. We actually had a lot more fun than I thought we would.

The nice thing about Vegas is it’s ridiculously cheap to stay there. Makes sense if you think about it–the hotels want you to gamble in their casinos! We ended up going real cheap and staying at the Flamingo. It was like $35 for a room and it’s right on the strip, next to all the nicer casinos like Caesar’s Palace, Bellagio, etc. One thing to note, is that the pools in Vegas all close at 5PM (except for Planet Hollywood, which is apparently open until 8). So we checked in around 4:30, got our swimsuits on and headed down to the pool with two very excited kids, annnnd, it was closing. We got to use it in the morning, but still would have been nice to know!

We originally thought we’d do a buffet for dinner, but the thought of spending $75 to sit down and keep our antsy kids from kicking each other under the table for an hour or two didn’t sound so appealing. So we ended up just walking around the strip and getting food to share as we walked. We got some amazing fish and chips at Gordon Ramsey’s super creatively named Gordon Ramsey Fish & Chips ($15, and the portion was huge!), steamed pork buns at Momofuku (a place we’ve been wanting to check out forever after reading the cookbook), cookies and ice cream at Milk Bar (the cereal milk soft serve was ridiculously good), and of course a cheeseburger at In & Out.

If you’ve ever been to Vegas you know there are a million places to stop and get a drink, too, but it’s just as easy (and a lot cheaper) to pop into one of the many convenience stores located inside the casinos or along the strip, and buy single beers. They have good craft beer in the fridges and it was only like $3-$4 (vs about double or more if you buy one from a bar). The bottle of Gatorade we bought for the kids to split was actually more expensive than the beer!

We didn’t go to any shows or anything, but the fountain at Bellagio, the M&Ms Store, the mini Eiffel Tower, and just wandering around the fancy casinos, provided more than enough entertainment for the night.

While I’m not organized enough to be keeping track of exactly how much money we’ve spent on this trip so far, I’m feeling really good about where we’re at. Turns out you really don’t have to spend a ton of money to have an amazing vacation. Lots of memories being made. And we’re not even halfway done!

Tonight we finally get into California, another state I’ve never been to. I can’t wait to see what adventures await us on the West Coast!

PS. This is my time not bringing any camera, other than my iPhone, on a trip. With so much stuff to drag around, I just didn’t want to add my heavy DSLR to the mix. So far I don’t regret the decision at all!

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Ben’s on the Road: Days 4 & 5

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

Created by Bristol-based illustrator Ali Xenos, this collection of thirty travel posters combines the retro, art deco design style of the 1960’s with popular fantasy locations from books and movies. Travel destinations depicted within the set include the unforgiving lands within the Game of Thrones series, the memorable locations in the Harry Potter books, the scenic locales in the Lord of the Rings literature and the futuristic worlds developed in the Star Wars universe.

If you are interested in purchasing any of these as prints, you can find the entire collection on Ali Xenos’s Etsy page here. But first, be sure to check out the entire collection of posters below!

Game of Thrones

Harry Potter

Lord of the Rings

Star Wars

30 Amazing Travel Posters for Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Star Wars