One of the the biggest challenges in traveling on a budget is finding cheap flights to where you want to go. It’s great to see advertisements on television about how easy it is get get a cheap last minute accommodation of some kind or another through a travel specialty website, but for the most part I find that the cheap last minute flights are usually to someplace that I don’t want to go.

Don’t get me wrong, they are all great vacation spots; I’m sure that a lot of people go there and have a lot of fun. But when I go on vacation I tend to go visit family, and they don’t live near any fantastic tourist spot that is going to offer great cheap rates on any kind of travel, whether it is last minute or not. In fact, the closer the travel date, the more expensive the tickets seem to be. Sometimes I miss the days of my youth when I would just throw my sleeping bag in the back of my station wagon, grab some maps and drive south until I reached someplace that seemed interesting. I looked at life like it was one great big adventure back then. I’m no longer interested in roughing it any more than staying in a five star hotel!