Four Traveling on $40 a Day...

Three months on the road in a four-door sedan with two young children, one tent and no air conditioning, blazing an 8,000-mile-long summer vacation trail?

Call us crazy, but that’s our plan for a journey around the United States--and on a budget as stretched as a used bungee cord. We started from San Diego on April 30 when we crammed our two young children, Henri, 5, and Matilda, 2, and a dizzying array of camping gear and clothing into our modest Toyota. We thus embarked on our three-month discovery tour of America in the year that marks the 500th anniversary of another famous discovery.

Call our journey “Adventure, Recession Style.”

According to our shaky math, if we combine wilderness and national park camping with affordable recovery periods in hotels and stays with family and friends, our family of four could pull it off for under $40 a day.

Well, we hope we can.

Our relatives are in shock about our decision to give it all up and get lost in America. But we were at one of those crossroads of life. A suburban American treadmill pulled us one way. A return to secure jobs and national health insurance in Australia (where we had lived before coming to San Diego) pulled us in another direction.

We chose in the end to put the decision off about where to live and work, gambling on something we had always dreamed of: traveling America and writing from the road. We would become a family of modern freeway explorers.

It was too much for our dear Aunt Lil, aged 73, who lives in La Jolla. Her head vibrated rapidly from side to side for a full minute in complete bewilderment.

Grandma Judie in San Diego, who used to make annual three-day, cross-country trips to her folks back East, kidded us that she could make money by selling us travel tips.

Grandma Leonie in Australia asked if she could come, too.

“There will be no room for hitchhikers,” we politely explained.

Aunt Shari, a yuppie Los Angeles publicist, admitted that traveling around America is a dream she and her fiance hope to fulfill before they have children.

“A Winnebago sounds so good to me now,” she said with a laugh.

A Winnebago for the Paget family? NOT! A four-person tent, a mountain paradise or a painted desert and a dancing campfire is what we call a holiday. But our monthlong preparation for the adventure was no vacation.

We started making plans to shut down our stationary lives last March. We gave notice we would be leaving our apartment, had a big garage sale, stored our furniture, mended our tent, combed camping stores, paid the bills and bought maps. Like kids in a giant candy store, we spent weeks scanning library books looking for the prettiest national parks, the campiest Americana highlights and the cheapest places to stay. We stocked up on “Let’s Go” guides because they are designed for people on a budget.

Then we joined the Automobile Club of Southern California through our local Del Mar office, where our travel consultant and route planner, Bonnie Fritts, pronounced our expedition out of the ordinary.

“This is certainly a big one,” Fritts declared. “We get some teachers and retired people who have got time to do an around-America trip, but not this extensive.” It was so extensive, in fact, that the detailed planning of our trip was referred to the Auto Club super-planners in Anaheim. “It will be ready in a week or so,” Fritts assured us.

For the initial single membership fee of $58, the Auto Club provided three detailed “Triptiks”--pocket-sized booklets showing our route page by page--plus a dozen or so additional state booklets with information on hotels, campgrounds and sights. The membership also gave us great travelers’ discounts and the security of knowing AAA offices nationwide would come to the rescue if we had a flat, locked our keys in the car or had a mechanical breakdown.

Our trip takes us through Arizona and Texas, dipping south to Memphis and Atlanta and then up to Washington, D.C., by May 28. We have a date with New York City on June 10, then begin our westward journey home via Niagara Falls and Chicago. We will spend July 4 in Yellowstone National Park. Ten days later, we will pull into Seattle for a cup of coffee and begin our trip south along the coastline to Los Angeles.

We should hit the peak-hour traffic jam on the 405 freeway on July 27.

We adults have a few things that we absolutely don’t want to miss along the way--things like the Amish country and Mt. Rushmore, Elvis’ Graceland and Dolly Parton’s Dollywood. We even look forward to seeing Jim and Tammy Faye Baker’s Heritage U.S.A. One of the high points will be that we’ll both turn 30 somewhere in Texas.

As for the children, Henri, who left kindergarten a month early, wants to stop at the Petrified Forest, the Statue of Liberty and the nation’s capital. “I want to go to the White House because I want to see George Bush,” he said. Henri was able to enroll in an “independent study” program with his school so the school won’t lose attendance money and he will continue his reading and keep a daily journal of his experiences.

Matilda, who will turn 3 in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is also excited. “We are going on a twip ,” she tells friends.

At the beginning of the journey into a land where millions of others have gone before, a thousand questions remain about what lies ahead.

How many times during the 8,000 miles will the kids ask, “Are we there yet?”

On how many of our approximately 60 romantic nights under the stars will it rain?

How much weight will we lose on the $10 a day we have budgeted for food?

Will hotels turn us away because we look like we’ve been camping for a year rather than a week?

How far away is the next public toilet? And is it clean?

Is that a rock I’m sleeping on?

Are we on the right road?

How often will we see Elvis?

We fastened our seat belts. This is gonna be one heck of a ride.