About

Hi, I'm Heather. My husband Wes and I live near Maxton, North Carolina, in a 1998 brick ranch on an acre of sandy ground, with a carport, a small garden and a beagle mix named June who thinks every car ride is about her. Wes grew up a few miles away in Pembroke. I grew up in Laurinburg, where my mom still lives.

I work the front desk at a dental office in Laurinburg, and Wes is a diesel technician who keeps a fleet of tractor-trailers on the road. We both work four ten-hour days, Monday through Thursday, so most weeks we get a three-day weekend. For years we spent them mowing, running errands and saying we should go somewhere.

At the start of 2025 we added up what we'd spent on two big vacations the year before and realized we barely remembered either one. So we made a new rule: one cheap weekend trip a month, paid for from a separate account that gets $250 on the first of every month. We live within a couple of hours of the beach, the Sandhills and the mountains, and two or three hours of Charleston and Savannah, so there's no shortage of places to go.

This blog is where I write it all down: what the gas cost, where we slept, what we ate, what broke on our 2017 CR-V and what our insurance did or didn't cover. I'm not a travel agent or a financial advisor. I'm the one in the passenger seat with the receipts in an envelope, and I share what worked for us so you can plan your own trips with better numbers.

Thanks for riding along. If you'd like to say hello, my contact page is always open.