I have another situation that I'm currently thinking though, with similarities to my beach parking dilemma.
This is an excursion for myself and 2 daughters.
The goal is not to spend as little as possible, but to make our time together enjoyable, without being frivolous with the budget. No unnecessary wastefulness.
A few years ago, my 3 kids and I went to a small town across the Sound, called Poulsbo. It's Norwegian in heritage, and a fun little spot to visit. I've been wanting to revisit that town this summer, with a couple or all of my kids.
Here are some of my options.
1) One day trip. Walk on the ferry, then take the public bus to the small town. It's about a 30 minute bus ride from the ferry terminal, which isn't bad at all. The problem is the limited bus schedule on the other end. The first bus of the morning from the ferry to Poulsbo doesn't even run until 9 AM, and we'd wanted to get to the town for an early breakfast at the locally-renown bakery. I love being in a town as it's first waking up for the day. Plus, the last bus of the day back to the ferry terminal leaves at 4:30 in the afternoon, so no chance of staying for the evening. I'll have to make a phone call and verify, but I think my daughters' bus fare would be free, as part of their monthly bus pass that they already buy to get to work, daily. The cost for my bus fare to Poulsbo would be $4 round trip. The ferry cost for 3 walk-ons is $24.
The other factor to consider is finding parking near the ferry terminal, or take local buses ( a series of 2 buses) to travel to the ferry terminal from our home. My daughters would be free on these buses, as well, but my cost would be $4.50 round trip (for a drive that costs $2.24 in gas round trip). Total cost for this trip would be $32.50 (to take all public transportation).
1b) A variation of this option is driving to the ferry, parking the car in a lot near the terminal. walking on ferry, taking public bus to Poulsbo. It would cost $2.24 in gas, and about $15 for all-day parking at the terminal, for drive down, walk on ferry, bus to Poulsbo, for a total trip cost of $45.24.
2) Another possibility, drive onto the ferry, have our car with us when we reach the other side. There's free parking in Poulsbo. But the drive-on cost for a car and 3 adults is about $50. We would be free to take a very early ferry and arrive in town as early as we would want. The bakery opens earlier than we could want to be there, and after breakfast, there's a nice walking path along Liberty Bay to explore. Shops and the free aquarium open around 10 AM. We could stay for free evening entertainment, and take a late ferry home.Total cost for this trip would be $50 plus about $5 in gas, for a cost of about $55.
3) Third (or is it fourth?) option, since we would already be making the ferry trip across the Sound, we could turn this into an overnighter. A nice, but inexpensive, place to stay would cost us just over $100 for 1 night, and would include a complimentary breakfast. It's where the kids and I stayed before. We could take all public transportation to get there, for a traveling cost of about $32.50. As we would be staying over 1 night, perhaps we wouldn't be as put off by the additional time required to do all buses, and limited scheduling of buses on the Poulsbo side of the Puget Sound. If all we had was a small backpack each, we could easily walk from the bus transfer station to the hotel. Our total cost for this version would be about $140.
I also looked into taxi costs to Poulsbo, and it is cheaper to drive our car onto the ferry and have our car to get to Poulsbo, than to take a taxi from the ferry terminal to the town.
Now that I've walked through the costs, I can see the value of each option. Driving to the ferry and leaving my car in paid-parking all day is almost as expensive as driving onto the ferry and keeping my car with us. Taking public buses on the other side of the Sound really limits the time we have available to explore Poulsbo. And taking all public transportation on both sides results in an additional 1 1/2 hours of travel time for a one-day excursion.
Keeping our car with us has one other advantage. We could pack the trunk with a very nice picnic lunch to enjoy in the waterfront park, bring sweatshirts for the cool early morning/late evening, pack plenty of hot coffee for me for the morning and ice water for all of us for the afternoon, plus a few snacks, AND have a place to put any fun finds from the many second-hand stores in that town. (We discovered on our first trip to Poulsbo that they have some great second-hand shops.) If we traveled by bus part of the way, we'd be more limited to what we could take with us (and bring home).
However, if we save $22.50 by taking public transportation the entire way, that could buy a nice carry-out lunch at the market to eat in the park, plus a cup of good coffee to get me started for the day and a couple of bottles of water for the afternoon.
In figuring if the overnight version really is of value, one of the things I take into consideration is just how many extra hours this would net us, for our excursion -- how many hours of enjoying the town do we gain by staying overnight. We would likely not begin our journey until later in the morning, so this would possibly be more leisurely travel. Wouldn't get to the town until about 10 AM, spending the day sightseeing, for about 10 hours of enjoyment on day 1. The following day, we would need to leave the town around 4 PM to make all of our bus connections, and so would enjoy the town for about 7 hours, for a total of about 17 hours. Compare this to driving there for 1 day, and spending up to 12 hours in that 1 day in the town (but more likely, about 10 hours).
Staying overnight doesn't quite double our time there, but almost triples our cost. It would actually be cheaper to drive/ferry there 2 days in a row, than to stay in the hotel, in town, overnight.
I'm still not sure which route to take. I guess we need to decide how many hours we realistically want and could manage for a day away. I am pretty sure we wouldn't really get the full value out of an overnight stay.
The final consideration I'll make, now that I can "see" the costs of all variations, is how to make the very most of a day away. One of my daughters was very disappointed that we didn't visit the free aquarium when we went to Poulsbo a few years ago. We happened to be there on days when the aquarium wasn't open. So, we would want to make sure that it was open for this excursion. I also would check the town calendar for local events going on. We happened to catch a brass band concert in the park on one of the evenings we visited, last time.
Does all of this look like a whole lotta extra thinking, just for a day trip? Or do you also map all of the possibilities out, in order to narrow down your choices?
