Thanksgiving travel deals that I missed

Are you thinking about heading home for the holidays? Get the best Thanksgiving travel deals by planning now. Hubby and I are hoping to visit our daughter in Washington. She has a big event on Thanksgiving weekend and we want to be there for it. The only snag is that we have to travel on a very tight budget. This means starting our planning now so we can get the deals.

Megabus is one of my favorite ways to get to D.C. so I checked there first. A couple of weeks ago the tickets were $10 each. Tickets now cost $49 per person, each way. Ouch! On our last trip to D.C., the gas costs were just under $200. The hotel is still one of the great Thanksgiving deals that are still available. I just can't book a room until we have our transportation locked in.

After comparing airline tickets, Megabus is still looking pretty good.

Flying may be an attractive alternative. Booking early is still the key to success. The Knoxville McGhee-Tyson airport has a list of available destinations. Washington-Dulles airport seems to be a hotspot since both U.S. Airways Express and United Express stop there.

An online search for airline travel deals found prices ranging from $388 to over $600. In addition to Kayak, a couple of places to look for Thanksgiving travel prices are Priceline and Expedia. Just be sure to check the  fine print on any offer.

The best travel option for us may be to drive. We haven't taken Hubby's pick-up truck on a long road trip so this should be interesting. My favorite planning tool for calculating gas prices is TravelMath.com. I can input our gas mileage and pick the route. The website calculates the gas, time and everything else.

My next call will be to my travel agent. Hopefully, she will be able to give me the inside scoop on travel deals for Thanksgiving. One thing that I have learned from all of this is to start planning early next year (like before October).