June Expenses

About what we figured it would be, so no great surprises. We spent a total of $2,279 CAD ($1,750 USD) which is not bad considering we started the month in Dawson Creek, British Columbia and ended it to Inuvik, Northwest Territories!

And as expected, the biggest expense of this trip is fuel. We drove a total of 2,925 kms (1,813 miles) during the month.

The biggest surprise of the monthly expenses? Groceries!

(Note: the following numbers are all in Canadian dollars. For U.S. dollar equivalent, you can subtract about 25%). Here's how it all broke down...

Gasoline: We spent $1,189 on gasoline. It's expensive up here in the north, but if you shop around, it's not as bad as we were expecting. We bought 768 liters of fuel at an average of $1.42 per liter. (That's 203 gallons at an average of $4.48 USD per gallon). Doing the math, that works out to about 8.9 miles to the gallon, which considering the "city like" speeds we've been doing on the Dempster Highway, Sherman is performing admirably! I actually did a more accurate test on the last tankful of fuel and it worked out to 8.5 mpg. Still, better than I was expecting!

Propane: We did not buy any propane during the month of June, having filled the tank on May 30th. But we will fill it up tomorrow before heading up to Tuktoyaktuk.

Groceries: Ruth is so good at shopping and making meals last. Sure, we had done a fair bit of stocking up for this trip in April and May, but our grocery expenses for those months weren't out of the ordinary either. We spent a total of $459 in the month of June. Yes, groceries are more expensive here in the north on an overall basis. But if you stock up in Whitehorse and buy stuff that's on sale, it's not much more than anywhere else in Canada.

Alcohol: We limited our intake, but spent as much as we do when we're in the south and not limiting our intake. So we spent $172.50 on three 12-packs of beer, and three 4 liter boxes of wine, but at least we enjoyed it.

Miscellaneous: This is usually the category that ends up higher than we expect, but June treated us pretty fair at $88. We spent $57 on accessing the internet, and $23 on laundry and a few minor things.

Entertainment: About as expected, at $152.40

Overnight: There is lots of opportunity for boondocking up here in the north. But, we still took advantage of the very fairly priced Yukon government campgrounds. We paid for 8 nights of camping for a total of $110 or an average of $13.75 per night.

Motorhome: We finally got that little welding job done to Sherman, and we were happy to pay only $208 to get it done.

So, a total of $2,279. Probably less than most people pay to stay at home!

We're thinking July will be even cheaper because we don't plan to do quite so much driving.