Barnaby'sDad
Contributor
Would you do it? The GF has a work trip to Orlando this summer. I am welcome to tag along. My question for you...would you consider staying in Orlando (free room) and driving ~2.5 hours to the closest diving spots (ex. Venice Beach, Jupiter, West Palm Beach, etc.) to save ~$100/day for hotel costs?
To put this trip in the context of my current driving/diving...I have to drive 2.5 hours to get to a decent quarry and I've done that as a day trip on a few occasions. That and I flushed a lot of money down the toilet on hotel rooms on my last trip to Florida. I'm not looking to do that again.
If I drop ~$100/day for a hotel, it would double the cost of the trip...and that's ~$500 that I can't spent on diving later in the summer. ex. I would like to get in a 2-3 day trip to NC. That ~$500 would pay for two days of diving ($250/day or so for the meg ledge trips).
I will of course have to consider that I'm going to burn ~$25/day on fuel driving back and forth from Orlando to a dive location each day. The benefit of the long drive is that if I rig up the rear cab of my truck with 550 cord like I did last time, hang my gear up, and roll with the windows down...it'll be dry (or mostly dry) by the time I get back to Orlando each evening.
Any thoughts other than "you are cray cray" are appreciated.
To put this trip in the context of my current driving/diving...I have to drive 2.5 hours to get to a decent quarry and I've done that as a day trip on a few occasions. That and I flushed a lot of money down the toilet on hotel rooms on my last trip to Florida. I'm not looking to do that again.
If I drop ~$100/day for a hotel, it would double the cost of the trip...and that's ~$500 that I can't spent on diving later in the summer. ex. I would like to get in a 2-3 day trip to NC. That ~$500 would pay for two days of diving ($250/day or so for the meg ledge trips).
I will of course have to consider that I'm going to burn ~$25/day on fuel driving back and forth from Orlando to a dive location each day. The benefit of the long drive is that if I rig up the rear cab of my truck with 550 cord like I did last time, hang my gear up, and roll with the windows down...it'll be dry (or mostly dry) by the time I get back to Orlando each evening.
Any thoughts other than "you are cray cray" are appreciated.