As fulltime travelers we have an advantage over other people who decide to travel. I remember during my working days I would save money for a year to take that nice relaxing vacation somewhere across the country. I usually drove but sometimes flew to the destination and tried to cram in daily sightseeing which ended up not being relaxing. Some of the get-aways were long weekends, some were a week long vacations and every few years I would take a two-week vacation.

Those vacations were hectic and expensive and when I got home it took two days to get everything around the house back in order - mowing, pick up mail, pay bills, pick up dogs at the kennel, re-stock the refrigerator, etc.

The last seven years we have been on vacation and it is finally a relaxing vacation. We can spend a week at Glacier National Park, two weeks roaming around old mining towns in Montana, a week at Yellowstone National Park and the next week fly fishing for trout in scenic mountain streams. Between sightseeing we often take a week or two off just to relax.

And there is no packing suitcases, stopping the mail, closing the house, leaving emergency phone numbers and the panic of rerouting canceled flights. We have our worldly possessions with us, our own bed and bathroom, and seldom make firm travel plans.

Now let me talk about cheap and expensive vacations and three recent trips come to mind - Puerto Penasco, Mexico and San Diego and Palm Springs, California.

In the middle of the winter we stayed in Puerto Penasco two weeks enjoying warm and sunny weather, walking on the beach (we camped on the beach), drinking margaritas and eating delicious shrimp (shrimp boat to grill to stomach in a matter of hours). Beside our campground there were high rise condos for sell and for rent with purchase prices of $400,000 to $1.4 million and renting for as little as $300 a day. We paid $228 for our campsite for two weeks while a couple in one of those condos paid $4,200 for the same amount of time, and our motorhome is just as luxurious as those condos.

San Diego is one of the most expensive cities in the United States and it offers tourist many attractions so vacationers flock there. While walking downtown we walked through and around the Marriott Hotel and found it a nice place, but the lowest room rate (corporate rate) was $275 a night and the standard rate was $435 a night for a larger room. If you were a registered guest Marriott allowed you to park your car in their garage for only $24 a night. We parked our motorhome in a campground on Mission Bay with full hookups including cable and free WiFi for $15 a night. Ten days in the hotel with a car would cost from $2,990 to $4,590 while we paid $150 and parked beside our door.

Our next ten day vacation took us to the Palm Springs area of southern California, a resort area where many people go to escape winter's chill and it can be very expensive. Again we're talking about $300 a night for hotel rooms that total $3,000 for that ten day vacation. In our motorhome we stayed at a casino free three nights and in a camping resort seven nights at $13 a night. So a vacationer would pay $3,000 for a room while we paid $91.

Hotel expenses for those 34 nights would cost $10,190 or more while our campgrounds cost $469 and we had the same advantage, living on the beach and bay, enjoying the same views, eating in the same restaurants and visiting the same attractions.

We feel sorry for vacationers who save and wait a year for their big annual vacation while we are on vacation every day and we can live cheaply.