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Being a photographer isn’t the glamorous job one might think, but it does definitely have its occasional perks. One being when I get to travel to take photographs. Recently I was hired to photograph a wedding in Breckenridge, Colorado and I immediately knew I wanted my family to come with me! My husband and I love the mountains, my kids have never seen snow, and my parents desperately needed a vacation, so off we went! We spent 4 days at Mountain Thunder Lodge in Breckenridge Colorado and I knew I just had to tell you about it (and share pictures so you would be insanely jealous…kidding, sort of). But more than that, I wanted to give you a few tips on how to travel to the mountains and save money, because if you didn’t know, travel can be expensive.
Here’s a few tips to help you along the way:
Use a website like Booking.com or AirBnB to cut costs.
I love staying in an AirBnB because you usually get more bang for your buck when you’re renting someone’s home as opposed to a boring hotel room. And *bonus* if you use this link, you’ll get $40 to spend towards your first trip! Free money to travel? Yes please!
Use the same companies every time you travel and earn rewards!
Fly with the same airline every time you travel and make sure you’re signed up for their mileage rewards program. My personal favorite airline is United.
Use a credit card where you can earn rewards.
I love my Chase Visa United Mileage Card. I use it for everything and earn miles that I can trade in for airline flights, hotels, rental cars, and cruises.
Timing is everything.
When you’re planning a trip to a ski town, you’re going to get the best prices when you’re visiting out of season. If you have your heart set on skiing, I get it, but you’re also going to pay three times as much traveling during those winter months than the summer months. Ski resorts can and will jack up their prices because they know they have something that people will pay more for. We visited the last weekend before the official start of ski season and we got a really great location with awesome amenities for a really great price.
Take advantage of the great weather and free amenities.
Activities like hiking and visiting state parks (like Red Rocks Amphitheater pictured above) are free! So get out there and enjoy the great outdoors! We also found out that the sister company to where we were staying at had a private bowling alley that we could use for free – we just had to call and reserve it. That was a great hour spent with the kids in our own bowling alley! Lastly, Breckenridge is an awesome place to visit because they have free trolleys that will take you all over downtown. So that means no paying to park!
Bonus tip to save time: check out restaurants on Yelp beforehand. You don’t want to waste time or money at a bad restaurant!
If you’d like to see more travel tips like this, be sure to follow me on Pinterest!
