Turn "Someday" Trips into Weekend Plans: Rent a Tent

A festival in Milwaukee. A long weekend in Chicago. A concert in the Twin Cities. You tell your friends you want to go… until you see the hotel prices and realize it’s out of reach no matter how you do the math. Next year maybe.

We’re not even talking about some next-level, bucket-list adventure. It’s the should-be “normal” close-by trips that you need in your life to take a breather from it all. As everything seems to be getting more expensive, the resentment builds.

I’m here to tell you to check that math one more time. There is a way to make those trips happen, even the ones coming up just around the corner, and be able to afford them - camping.

Keep reading, and I bet you’ll be convinced that camping, of all things, now needs to be part of your (and your friends’) lifestyle.

The Hotel Problem Around Events

Hotels know when you need them. A room that runs $90 on a Tuesday in October will run $280 the weekend of Summerfest, $320 the weekend of a sold-out stadium show, $400 during a food festival in a mid-size city. Dynamic pricing is real, it's aggressive, and it hits hardest exactly when you most want to travel somewhere.

And the cruel irony is that you don't even need the hotel that badly. You're going to a concert. You'll be out until midnight. You need somewhere to sleep, not somewhere to hang out. But the hotel charges you peak rates regardless of how little time you actually spend there.

Campgrounds don't do that. A site 30 to 45 minutes outside of almost any city runs $20–$35 a night, festival weekend or not. That gap, between what a hotel charges during an event and what a campground charges any night of the year, is a mic-drop, case-closed argument for camping.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Summerfest, Milwaukee

Summerfest is the largest music festival in the world, running nearly two weeks along the Milwaukee lakefront every summer. If you want to go for a weekend, downtown Milwaukee hotels will run you $250–$350 a night during the festival. That's $500–$700 in lodging for a two-night trip before you've bought a single ticket or a single beer.

Kettle Moraine State Forest — Southern Unit is about 45 minutes southwest of Milwaukee. Campsites there run around $25 a night. You're looking at $50 for the weekend in lodging, a 45-minute drive to the festival, and a quiet place to sleep it off each night. It’s not even close.

The Twin Cities — Concerts, the State Fair, and More

Minneapolis and St. Paul punch well above their weight for live music, sports, and events year-round. Target Center, Xcel Energy Center, the Minnesota State Fair, Soundset, the Renaissance Festival — there's almost always something worth making the two-and-a-half-hour drive from La Crosse for. And Twin Cities hotel prices during major events are every bit as punishing as Milwaukee's.

Since you're coming up from La Crosse, you're already approaching from the south — which puts Lebanon Hills Regional Park right on your route. It's a 2,000-acre county park in Eagan, about 20 minutes from downtown St. Paul, with 93 campsites and a network of hiking trails and lakes. You roll in, set up camp, drive into the city for the show, and drive back. Simple.

Chicago

Chicago is four hours from La Crosse and one of the best weekend trip destinations in the country — music, food, museums, architecture, sports, Lollapalooza in the summer. It's also one of the more expensive cities to sleep in, especially anywhere near downtown or the lakefront.

Indiana Dunes National Park is about an hour southeast of the city on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, and it's the right base camp for a Chicago trip in more ways than one. Campsites run around $35 a night. But here's the part worth knowing: the South Shore Line commuter train runs directly from the Dunes into downtown Chicago, stopping right on Michigan Avenue. If you don't want to deal with city traffic or parking — and you probably don't — you don't have to. Camp at the Dunes, take the train in, do Chicago, ride back. Yes, I’m telling you you can combine a national park trip with a Chicago getaway and save significant money. Illinois Beach State Park about an hour north of the city is a solid backup if the Dunes are booked.

Camping as the Engine of a Longer Road Trip

The event-weekend logic scales up. If you've been thinking about a longer trip. Let’s say, out West, down South, a cross-country loop, camping is what makes it financially survivable.

A two-week road trip out west hits Colorado, Utah, maybe Wyoming and Montana. That's 14 nights of lodging. At even a modest $150/night average for hotels, you're looking at $2,100 just to sleep. Camping those same nights — a mix of state parks, national forest dispersed sites, and KOAs when you want a shower could put you in the range of $300–$500 total. You just freed up $1,500+ to spend on the actual trip.

That's the difference between a road trip you can afford and one you can't. You're not roughing it. You're actually adding a more meaningful dimension to the experience. The conversations you have while cooking a meal together on a camp stove in front of a mountain backdrop make the trip worth taking in and of itself.

This way, you won’t anxious about buying that extra souvenir or taking that spur-of-the moment detour.

The western parks — Arches, Zion, Grand Teton, Glacier — have campgrounds inside or adjacent to the parks themselves. You wake up already there. It's not a compromise; it's genuinely the better way to experience those places.

Gear Isn't a Reason to Stay Home

The one real objection to all of this is the gear. A tent, sleeping bags, pads, a camp stove. If you don't own any of it, buying it all before your first trip feels like a commitment you're not ready to make.

That's why we rent it. You can get a complete setup for three people for a weekend for only $79 (about $25 a day), prepackaged as a kit so you don’t even have to think about what items you’ll need. If you have a big group going, we have large tents—or you can just rent a few small ones and stay at adjacent camp sites. It’s a better experience than separate hotel rooms.

Try the trip. See how it goes. If you end up camping four or five weekends a year, then you can think about owning your own gear. But don't stay home because you don’t have the gear.

You're Not Going to Care That You're in a Tent

Here's the thing about camping after a concert or a festival: you're tired. You've been on your feet for six hours, maybe you've had a few drinks, you're happy and worn out. You do not need a pillow-top mattress and a hotel breakfast. You need somewhere to lie down.

A sleeping bag, sleeping pad, and a tent absolutely qualifies. And in the morning, you're at a campground — which is a nicer place to have coffee and regroup than a hotel lobby or a parking structure. You drove somewhere to do something. The tent was just how you were able to afford it. And it makes for a better story, too.

Pick the Trip First

Don't start with your budget and try to find a trip that fits it. Start with the thing you actually want to do — the festival, the show, the city, the drive — and let camping make the math work.

Check the event calendar to see what’s happening this summer and the campgrounds page to see where you can stay. Rent the gear. Go.

The trip you've been putting off is a lot more affordable than you think.