Exploring a new country on a budget

Hi there!

So, me and Mitchell have been trying to see as much of Southern California as we can while we're here. Mitchell works during the week, so most of our adventures happen at the weekends and occasionally in the evenings. This does leave me with a lot of time to search out fun things to do and the best places to do them. 

We're currently operating on a single income (expecting my work permit to arrive from late October) and while Mitchell's salary is enough to live on, we're still catching up on the costs of moving, buying new furniture, a car etc. so we're trying to not spend too much each month beyond the necessities while still experiencing new things. 

I've been putting a surprising amount of time into finding and planning activities, so I thought I'd write down some of my methods and tips for having the most amount of fun with the least amount of money!

Before I start, I just want to take a moment to talk about the unavoidable cost of travelling in the States. While buses are around, if you want to travel anywhere that isn't up and down the main street of a city, you really do need a car. I take a "it is what it is" approach to fuel, probably because it's so much cheaper out here compared to the UK, and also our car is super efficient. Seriously, if we had one of the giant SUVs you see so many of around here, our miles per gallon would literally halve. At the moment, we can fill up for around $40 (thank you Ralphs fuel rewards program) and theoretically go for up to 360 miles. Getting a small efficient car will save us so much money in the long run. 

Curiously, we did find out that if you're planning on doing a long roadtrip, it can actually be cheaper to rent a hybrid car than drive your own because of the fuel saving costs. We haven't tested it out yet, but we may in the future! 

Follow your local communities on social media! I follow "City of Riverside" on instagram and they always share when they have a local festival or event or when there's a new exhibition at the local museum. This has been a great way to find a cheap way to spend an afternoon. I love a museum or garden, and local ones are always free or only ask a small donation. Even some of the bigger ones will have "free days" for their local residents. The best part is that the art museums especially tend to rotate their exhibitions pretty regularly so you can go back and visit a few times a year. Definitely try to make the most of your local area, be a tourist and local at the same time! 

Do something normal. We went to the cinema, and it was like a whole new experience for us! The seats were different, the snacks were different, just this made it so much more fun than a cinema back home. Every time I go to the store, I'll always try to buy something new. Either a jar of a sauce I haven't heard of before, a weird looking fruit or vegetable, anything that is something we wouldn't get at home. This is such a simple way to feel like your exploring while spending your money on something sensible. 

Make sure to check out smaller eateries rather than full restuarants. Our one trip to the Cheesecake Factory cost us as much as three trips to the Riverside food lab! As well as being a lot cheaper, smaller places will reflect the local community and you can get some really interesting mixes! Again, if you want to find a new place you can search social media or look on Google Maps where you may also find useful tips on parking or specific dishes which everyone is recommending!

We love camping. It feels like a very exciting adventure and after the initial cost of equipment (which was actually a very reasonable $300) we get a weekend away in a new place for only $20-30 a night. Unfortunately, it seems everyone else in California loves camping too, so the places get booked up pretty quickly and we've only ever managed to get in via a cancellation or on a Thursday months in advance. Most campgrounds are in national parks or forests, but a lot of these aren't too far from the next city or town, so it's a great way to explore nature, culture and unique towns in one go. 

Visit real towns not fake ones. Amusement parks, especially the big ones, are so expensive so we're holding off on visiting for a while. However, a lot of small town can give off very similar vibes to districts of Disneyland. Solvang, Pioneertown and Balboa Park are all real towns filled with working, living people, but have weird and amazing architecture themes and you can spend all day walking around, taking in the sites, without having to pay a thing (other than parking and maybe lunch). 

First up, nature is the best! One of the cheapest activities which delivers the most impressive views has been the various nature parks, mountains and beaches we've been to. California in general has some amazing natural spaces and we're very lucky to have all of these an hour or less away. 

Sometimes they ask for parking fees, but it's usually only $5-15 depending on the place and if we bring a picnic, this is normally our only cost for the entire day. 

How to find the best places. I take several approaches to finding new places to explore. Personal recommendations (or instagram posts which may pop up) are always an excellent place to start as you know it will be worth the trip. If you haven't been told about a specific trail or area, but know you want to explore somewhere along that coastline or visit that forest, I start with looking on Google maps. This tells me how far away it is (and therefore how long we should expect to stay there to make the journey worth it), and I can manually search by zooming and grazing for any trailheads or sites of interest. Once I have some named points, I start my research. 

The reviews on Google maps are actually surprisingly helpful at working out what you can expect at a place and even things like where to park and occasionally recommendations of better places to visit. There's a search button where you can specifically look for reviews which mention parking or bathrooms which can be so useful as a lot of the time this information is not on the official website. These reviews also have dates so you can see when someone visited and how relevant it will be to your experience. Eg. you can tell if someone visited last week and said the trail was closed, or if they visited in summer and complained that it was too hot or the water all dried up etc. 

Once I have these I'll obviously Google to see if any official pages come up with more information. A lot of the smaller nature parks are run by the same council and all the information is very generic, so sometimes I don't learn much more. 

When hiking, All Trails is a site that comes up a lot and while I haven't found it so useful for planning out a specific hike, it will list all the options in the area, with times and difficulty ratings and there are always so many reviews so it is really helpful in choosing which hike to do in any given area. 

Once I've made the decision on which hike to do, I'll search for that specific trail and I've found that the best place to get information is from local hiker blogs. Sites like "Nobody hikes in LA" and "The hiking guy" have been full of information about where's best to start, what time of year is best and even provide step by step guidance on some trails (as a lot are not clearly marked when you get there). I'll bookmark these to take with us and away we go!

For activities that aren't hiking (like beach days) it's a pretty similar approach, but I'll end up on different blog posts. "That OC Girl" has given me great ideas about how to make the most of various beaches close to us and other activities in the area. 

Blogs written by local people are so much better than going straight to Google or Yelp for "things to do in LA" etc as they'll include smaller items like visiting street art or flower farms or just cool areas of a city to walk around and admire. 

I hope that some of that was useful or interesting, be sure to read what we've found this week on the main blog page!