I'm trying this new travel plan ya see....

Open scene: We find ourselves in a smoke filled speak-easy where our heroine is trying desperately to order Sasparilla at a discount. Finding the bartender uncooperative she is forced to commandeer the microphone on the stage and climb atop the piano in a desperate attempt to sing for her supper.

Don't worry, I have a plan B.

So our trip to Chicago is fast approaching and I'm in the final stages of acquiring the food we'll take with us. Seems crazy. I am never ready more than an hour (even that is optimistic) before go time. I'm sure there will still be clothes to pack and the such on travel day but I have already stocked up on just about all the food we'll take. My plan is to pack breakfast (for our stop in St. Louis where we will not have breakfast provided by our hotel), lunch for the duration of the trip, drinks, and snacks. I refuse to pay 10 bucks for a gas station nosh stop when I can get the same things here for super cheap and actually mostly free.
I was inspired by Saving a Bundle's super frugal Disney World trip where she packed most of their food and saved mega bucks. We'll still eat dinner out with planned stops at The Cheesecake Factory, Pizzeria Uno (the original, sweeeet!), and another Chi-town pizzeria.

An added bonus I'm totally stoked about is that from St. Louis to Chicago we'll be traveling on Route 66 where we will pass the original Steak and Shake drive in. Milk shakes might have to make it into the eating out budget. I mean Steak and Shake is my absolute favorite.
As it stands now I'll spend less than $20 for all food, snacks, and drinks, besides dinner, for the entire trip. I'm pretty stoked because we can't eat out twice on that budget let alone six times. I'm planning to make a menu plan so I know how much we can eat when and where to pack it so it is accessible. If I'm super ambitious I'll post my final plan. The dinner restaurants we are going to are a little pricey and don't have Restaurant.com gift certificates.

*Side Note*If you haven't used restaurant.com yet you should totally check them out! Right now you can save 70% by using the code savor at check-out. Stack that with a rebate site like Mr. Rebates to get an additional 30% off. If you haven't used a rebate site before most give you a $5 bonus for signing up. What that spells is free certificates! Around Christmas I took advantage of the deep discounts and scored twelve free certificates for some super cheap date nights. Just pay attention to what you are buying! These aren't tradition gift certificates, there are usually minimum purchase amounts and some restaurants have weekend or dinner exclusions.

As I was saying there are no discounted certificates so we'll be paying full price which means our dinner budget will be closer to $50. For Hotels and Travel we are taking advantage of Costco and AAA discounts. And we're thinking about getting a Chicago Citypass to save money on site seeing. I'm totally bummed we can't take the Segway tour but having little guy along will be totally worth it...even if he won't remember a thing we'll have pictures.

Lastly we'll be visiting the Temple we were married at in St. Louis

as well as the temple in Chicago which we haven't been to yet. I'm excited to add a new temple to the list of those we've visited in our travels.

P.S. Totally stoked to tell you I'll be having my first give-away ever coming up soon. I feel...so blogficial....sigh.