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When I'm going away, I'll either take a Skywatcher 127 Maksutov Cassegrain (if I'm wanting to look at planets) or an ED80 on either a Vixen Portamount II or a home made table top type mount - see pics. Both scopes fit in either a duffle bag or slightly longer padded home made bag for transport and they can fit neatly behind a seat in the back of a ute. The Maksutov is excellent for planets as it's a long focal length giving relatively high magnification per eyepiece and pretty sharp images. Not very good for wider field viewing though. The ED80 refractor is the opposite - good for wider field viewing and reasonable for spotting planets. (Good for birds and attaching a camera to as well). The home made type mount is small, portable, robust and stable. But you need a good finder scope and planetarium app on your phone (which will work without phone signal once you set it up) but you'll have to learn your way around the sky and learn to find stuff. I have, in the past, taken an 8" reflector on trips - nah, just too big and easily knocked out of alignment. An 80ED Refractor on a Porta mount or Bintel Skyview Alt-Az mount might fit the budget (particularly if you can get the scope s/h) and be robust and pretty portable but you'll need to find stuff without the computer. The scopes in the photos are a 500mm F5 Acromatic refractor with binoviewer (wouldn't recommend!) and a longer 900mm 4" refractor which is a very nice scope but perhaps a little long for your purposes but the mounts give you an idea what you can knock up with a jigsaw and a drill if you're handy.
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