Bargains Close to Home

Europe and Asia may be exotic and exciting, but North America is closer and cheaper. For readers with limited budgets, here are 10 home-grown, easy-to-reach, bargain-priced possibilities for your summer vacation.

1. Frugal basket-weaving. Room, board and instruction in your choice of a multitude of crafts, as well as sculpture and painting, cost as little as $510 per person for one week, $945 for two weeks, at the impressive Penland School in North Carolina. For details, write to Penland School, P.O. Box 37, Penland, NC 28765, or telephone (704) 765-2359.

2. Horsy holidays. Adults pay as little as $830 to $995 a week, and children only $450 to $500, for room and board for seven days and nights at scores of Western dude ranches. What’s more, the price includes a horse--your own horse--for the week. For information on this outstanding, budget-priced, family vacation, contact The Dude Ranchers’ Assn. of Colorado at P.O. Box 471G, La Porte, CO 80535; tel. (970) 223-8440. Or Colorado Dude Ranches, P.O. Box 300, Tabernash, CO 80478; tel. (970) 887-9248.

3. Windjammers of Maine. Not to be confused with Windjammer Barefoot Cruises in the Caribbean, these are six-day adventures on turn-of-the-century sailing schooners off the rocky coast of Maine. The cost is $575 to $675 per person, all-inclusive except for the transportation that brings you to Rockland, Rockport or Camden, Maine, where the ships depart. Call (800) 807-WIND for more information.

4. Rock-bottom Laughlin. In summer, when temperatures there have been known to reach 115 degrees, the hotel-casinos of Laughlin, Nev., 90 miles south of Las Vegas, have charged on occasion as little as $9 a room (they are more frequently available for $12 and $14 in summer--that’s for two people). Meals? Buffet breakfasts generally cost less than $3, a buffet lunch less than $4, a buffet dinner less than $5. Laughlin, which supports nine big-but-cheap hotel-casinos and two motels, is possibly the cheapest city (for visitors) on Earth. Most visitors drive there, but America West also provides daily jet service from Phoenix.

5. Modest motor homes. Curious about how you’d like a motor home? The Oregon-based Adventures on Wheels, tel. (800) 601-7368, rents them out fully equipped for $595 per week. That averages out to as little as $85 per couple per day, in summer, letting free spirits roam the picturesque and remarkable routes of the Pacific Northwest in comfortable, inexpensive fashion. The RVs come fully equipped, packed with every amenity.

6. A U.S./Canadian rail bargain. For the first time, the national railway systems of both the U.S. and Canada have cooperated to create a North American Rail Pass, good for 30 days of unlimited rail travel in both countries, for $645. It’s sold at any railway ticket office; or call (800) USA-RAIL (from the U.S.).

7. Take the bus. Once again, Greyhound Bus is offering its Ameripass this summer, allowing unlimited bus transportation through the continental U.S. for seven days ($199, $179 for seniors), 15 days ($299, $269 seniors) or 30 days ($409, $369 seniors). Call (800) 231-2222 for more information.

8. D.C. deals. When Congress leaves town (late June through mid-July and for most of August), prices plummet in the nation’s capital, even as the quicksilver climbs. Rates as low as $69 per room are offered at good-quality hotels (try the River Inn, tel. [800] 424-2741), and the city’s broad array of free attractions (Smithsonian museums, a White House visit, Capitol Hill and the FBI, among others) are supplemented by a great many no-charge cultural events described in a free booklet called “101 Free Things to Do in D.C.” Call (202) 724-5644 for a copy.

9. Think Quebec. Canada’s Quebec is excitingly foreign and--in 1998--especially cheap, thanks to a historically high Yankee dollar ($1 U.S. recently bought $1.35 Canadian). Among the province’s best family resorts: Mont Tremblant’s century-old Gray Rocks, with a friendly atmosphere, comfy rooms and fancy French cuisine. From May 15 to June 23, $69 per person per night (kids sometimes less) buys a room and two meals a day, plus access to the spa, 18-hole golf course, 22 tennis courts, water sports and private lakeside beach. Gray Rocks, tel. (800) 567-6767; Tourisme Quebec, tel. (800) 363-7777.

10. Alaska, seriously. A full 14 days at sea, in the waters off Alaska, passing every one of Alaska’s major port cities and glacier locations, cost as little as $1,895 per person aboard the serious, science-minded 739-passenger S.S. Universe Explorer of World Explorer Cruises (555 Montgomery St., San Francisco, CA 94111; tel. [415] 393-1565 or [800] 854-3835). That price (based on double occupancy, in inside cabins) is for the first and last departures of the season, round-trip, Vancouver to Vancouver, May 26 and Aug. 25. The rate then rises for a succession of two-week departures from June 9 to Aug. 4. A single seven-day sailing on Aug. 18 starts at $1,050. Interesting, well-read people book the ship.

This new column from Frommer, the longtime budget travel expert, will appear weekly in the Travel section.