How do find a deal for a long weekend road trip?

Karen asked a great question on the Trips with Angie Facebook page, "I am curious about finding a deal that is within a 5 hour or so driving distance from Atlanta for a long 20th wedding anniversary weekend. Where to start?!"

Well, here's what I would do:

See what resources you have.  
Take a look at your airline, hotel or credit card reward points.  You may have enough reward points to cover one or two nights hotel which will really help and decreasing the cost.

Pick a place
To narrow down the geography, go to Google Maps and see what is about 300 miles from your home.  How do you know what's 300 miles? When you zoom in or out on Google Maps on the computer, a map scale in the lower right changes distance per inch of the map. In this case, I waited until it got to 200 miles, then looked for cities about that far from Atlanta.  This includes great cities like Savannah, Charleston, Birmingham, Panama City Beach, and Nashville.

If you aren't looking for a city vacation, I also look for bodies of water in that geography. Lakes, oceans, and springs tend to have a little tourist infrastructure nearby.

Since I like to travel with a purpose, the next thing I will do is  a little Googling to see if there's a festival based on one of my hobbies or interests on that weekend.  I also love trying new restaurants so I'll head over to tvfoodmaps.com to see if anything looks interesting. Finally, I always stop at roadsideamerica.com when we are taking a road trip to see what fun monuments may be on the way. 

One of my favorite roadside attractions - a big shark.

Find Your Accommodations

So once you have all those things together: your geography and what points you may have available, you can start your search for accommodations. I start with the hotels that I have points. I also recommend including campgrounds in your search because many of the campgrounds also have cabins for rent but you don't really find that out until you go to the Campground website. An easy way to do this search is to go Google Maps, find the city you'd like, click search nearby and type hotels or campgrounds.

That's what I would do if you came to me with that travel request. As always,  if you have any questions post them on Facebook or join me on Facebook Live on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.