This ain't goin'a be cheap!

One of the most important parts of any expedition is the financing of said expedition. Of course, this is also one of the things that you very rarly hear anything about. Not a lot of attention is given to what Columbus had to go through to get his little trip under way but, there is certainly a lot of attention paid to the riches he brought back. The simple fact of the matter is that no mater the size of the trip, it costs money. Be it a trip across town or across the country, you are going to incur expenses.   The bigger the trip, the bigger the expenses.


The entire budget for the original Corps of Discovery was $2500...  For some reason, even though our corps is much smaller than the original, I just don't think we are going to get by quite that cheap.

The National Park Service advertises the Lewis & Clark Trail as having a length of 3700 miles, one way.  If we start at the Falls of the Ohio and follow the river down to Cairo and then up the Mississippi to Camp Dubois like the original Corps of Discovery, that means another 500 miles to the trip. And of course there are going to be side trips too. There are a few thing out west that I want to show the kids and Illianna that are not on the path that Lewis and Clark blazed. While we are that close to some of these places and things I plan to take advantage of them. Who knows when we will pass that way again. I mean, I am closing in on 50 and have never been to the northwest, the Dakotas, Yellowstone, the Little Big Horn, Deadwood...... there's a lot to see out there ;-)  SO side trips are going to add some significant mileage to the trip. And even though I have a GPS devise, there will be wrong turns and tours of parking lots, trips to the store and who knows what which further add mileage to the odometer. Oh yeah, and once we get there, we got to get back. Straight line back, we are looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of another 1700 miles. Now, we haven't really talked about the route back yet but I am pretty sure we aren't going to follow the Lewis & Clark Trail back east but, even if we did, that is another 3700 miles which we will use for planning purposes. That means this trip is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 8500 miles and more probably 9,000 miles. At 20 miles to the gallon, that means 450 gallons of diesel. Now, I'm thinking that 20MPG in the mountains is not realistic so, I figure as a planning factor another 150 gallons for safeties sake, I mean that is a 33% margin right? So, 600 gallons of diesel at $3.00 a gallon [Yeah, I know that is high but who knows what it will be in the summer.] means we are looking at fuel costs of around $1800.

That leaves us $700 to live on....... And unlike the original Corps of Discovery I don't think we will be able to suppliment our diet by hunting the native game along the trail..... More on Food and Lodging later..........