Each March, innumerable college students embark on the week-long adventure known as Spring Break. Many students travel to major party locations such as Cancun, Panama Beach and South Padre Island. In order to vacation at these exotic locales, travelers are forced to purchase expensive plane tickets and hotel rooms, which put a big dent in any college budget.

Thrifty coeds have long opted for a less traditional Spring Break, and instead tackle a road trip. The open highway may not be as glamorous as a Caribbean cruise or an all-inclusive resort, but many students maintain that a road trip has benefits no other Spring Break trip could offer.

Expensive hotels not necessary

Although there is always the option to lodge in a five-star hotel when you reach your final destination, cheap accommodations are a staple of the typical road trip.

Road trippers often choose to stay overnight in places they find along the road, in order to save cash.

Amanda Murphy, sophomore in pre-journalism and mass communication, plans to take a road trip to Sedona, Ariz. and the Grand Canyon. She has not made reservations at any hotels and has no intention of doing so during her travels.

“[My friends and I] are camping along the way whenever we get tired,” Murphy said.

Her only premeditated campground is along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Other student travelers, like Jessica Mazour, sophomore in psychology, and Graham Jaksich, sophomore in history, have made arrangements at the cheapest hotel they could find. Mazour and Jaksich plan to stay with two friends at a hotel in the heart of Chicago.

“We used a Web site called Last Minute Travel to get a really cheap room,” Mazour said. “You request how many rooms, location and what not, then [the Web Site] finds hotels for really cheap . We got a four star hotel for $88 a night.”

No expensive plane tickets

The most obvious benefit of taking a road trip is you don’t have to pay for expensive airfare to travel. Although the price of gasoline isn’t exactly at an all-time low, splitting the cost with a few friends definitely beats paying hundreds of dollars for a plane ticket.

Murphy plans to spend roughly $300 on her road trip to the Southwest.

“That’s 2,800 miles worth of gas, food for three people for nine days, and entry and camping fees – much better than paying $900 for just a ticket to London,” she said.

Lindsay Hoffman, junior in communication studies, once took a road trip to Colorado to go skiing.

“It was $250 total in a Toyota 4Runner from West Des Moines to Steamboat, Colo., and back,” she said.

According to Northwest Airlines’ Web site, www.nwa.com, round trip tickets from Des Moines to Denver cost between $450 and $500.

Every seat has a window

Another bonus of a road trip is the ability to enjoy all the scenery that passes outside your window.

Unlike traveling by plane or ship, you are able to easily interpret visual stimuli and physical sensation from a car. You cannot conceive the enormity of the Rocky Mountains from a jet’s window, nor can you roll down the windows and feel the desert wind blow through your hair.

“When you are going on a road trip,” Murphy said, “the ride there is just as fun as the destination.”

You pick the pit stops

It seems that plane trips always force you to stop in strange locations for endless hours when you’re just yearning to get to your vacation destination. Face it – airports are not an interesting place to hang out for hours on end.

The most exciting part of a road trip may be picking the strange places to stop along the interstate.

There doesn’t need to be any premeditated desire to pull over at “the world’s largest doughnut” or “the pancake capitol of the world.”

“It would be nice to find something like a SPAM Museum,” Murphy said.

If you do plan to stop somewhere, it should be delightfully tacky.

Jaksich and Mazour plan to attend a “Jerry Springer” taping in Chicago. They received free tickets after applying online and hence planned their entire Spring Break trip around it.

“I’m going there to see American citizens at their worst,” Jaksich said.

Good company

The final benefit of road tripping is the ability to travel with good friends. Unlike planes, trains, boats and buses, in a compact automobile you are only surrounded by those you desire to be with.

There are no strangers on a road trip. There are no wailing babies, no snoring seniors and no screaming girlfriends. A road trip is what you make of it, and good company is half of the battle.

“The best part about road trippin’ is being stuck in a car for multiple hours with your best friends doing really stupid things. You really get to know your friends when you are in such close proximity,” Mazour said.

Murphy agrees.

“Great adventures and memories are made when you go with good friends,” she said.