Summer comes to an end

I spent this weekend in Northern Saskatchewan, camping with some good friends.

Sitting on the sandy beach late at night drinking Champagne I realized that this would be the last time that most of us would be together. Through travel, graduation, and life decisions it seems everyone has their own path to travel.

From

From

From

15 days until I depart.

Camping Trip (The Art of Being Frugal)

This post isn't related to my trip to India. It's about the camping trip I took with friends last weekend and how we were able to get all the additional camping gear we needed for 'free'. It's not that I am broke, I actually have quite a bit of money now in the bank, but with my big trip coming up I need to cut expenses whenever possible.

One of the things I have gained from my time as a university student is a better understanding of 'the art of being frugal'. After all, money saved on camping gear is money that can be spent on more bacon (and/or future travel)!

We had most of what we needed for our weekend trip but where lacking a couple of items; mainly an extra tent, camera, lantern, and decent portable ipod speakers.

For those of you who don't already know, Wal-Mart has a great return policy. Regardness of whether or not you like the store, they are a great source for 'free rentals' of almost every type. WalMart's return policy for most goods is 90 days (30 days on electronics). This period is generally enough to cover almost an entire summer! Below are some of the items recently returned to WalMart after consuming their utility during our trip. Thanks for the freebies WalMart! 

Money Saved: Tent-$80, Lantern-$40, Ipod Speakers-$45, Digital Camera-$110

So how did camping go?