Hike Through History In The Sierra Calif. Mountains

For more than 50 years around the turn of the century, the Sugar Pine Railway operated steam engines to haul lumber along the Stanislaus River in Central California. Now it boasts an amazing easy hiking or biking trail with a gentle 3% incline and a walk through history. 

The trail is lined with posts that mark historical highlights. You can pick up a guide at the Mi-Wok Ranger Station. 

The railway spans 70 miles with more than 400 miles of branches so this is just a small 5-mile span. But it's beautiful as it hugs the river and ends in a meadow. Much of the trail is also shaded. There is limited parking at the trailhead on Fraser Flat Road. Check with the ranger in the winter to see if the road is open. 

How Southwest Makes It Easy To Change Your Flight

Reason #5 that I love Southwest Airlines! If you want to change a flight, it's FREE and EASY. No change fees, no penalties, no nothing and you can even switch to another flight and get a credit. Wow! 

Here's how to do it: 

1. Log in to your account

2. Click on my travel 

3. Click on change flight 

4. Select the flight you want to change 

5. Southwest will show you the options and what the points or dollar difference is

6. Select your new flight and bam, done. 

So you can see above, if I change this flight, it is going to cost me more points. Southwest will automatically adjust your account to reflect the diffference. If it's less points, Southwest will credit your account. You don't even have to pay another $5.60. Amazing. 
I check upcoming flights a few times just to see if I can save some points. You can rebook the same flight if the price/points has changed. 
If you have a companion pass and have booked a companion on the flight, you will need to cancel the companion ticket first (write down the confirmation code so you can reapply the $5.60), rebook your flight and then add your companion again. 
Still easy, but one more step. 

How I Scored 3 FREE Tickets To See A World Famous Glacier

The world-famous glacier, Petit Moreno in Patagonia, Argentina, is a spectacular site. It is one of the only glaciers in the world that is expanding rather than retracting. And tour companies have started allowing visitors to trek on the ice using crampons. Since we are going to be in Chile and Argentina next year, this seemed like a great add to the itinerary. 

But the determining factor for us is always can I get our family of 5 there without breaking the bank. 

This stop involved a few logistics. First, I had already booked award travel tickets for our family into Santiago, Chile and out of Buenos Aires, Argentina. I had not booked the flight between those two cities yet, but an American Airlines rep said I could book the flight for 10,000 miles for each ticket. 

Okay, not too bad, but I decided to play around a little bit with flights from Santiago to El Calafate, Argentina which is the closest airport to the glacier. 

Here's an interesting surprise. 

• Flights from Santiago to El Calafate run about $259 round trip. 
• Flights from Buenos Aires to El Calafate run about $250 round trip. 

Obviously, it would be a waste to use miles to get from Santiago to Buenos Aires and then pay for flights to El Calafate. I called American Airlines back and found out there are no award tickets from Buenos Aires to El Calafate. Bummer. 

Next option, If you have been following my blog, you know that I was approved for the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card recently. I had waited for years to get that card so I'm excited. Now, I reached the $4000 minimum spend and was awarded 50,000 Chase Ultimate Reward bonus points, woohoo! 

Those bonus points are worth about $750 if redeemed in the Chase Travel Portal and $500 if used for cash back. You can also transfer those points to airlines at a 1;1 ratio. 

So what if we look for flights from Santiago to El Calafate round trip in the portal. Look what we found, the flights run $259 if you pay cash, but just 17,266 points. The point value is less because a benefit of the Sapphire Reserve is that your points are worth 50% more when you redeem them in the portal.

Here's where it gets a bit tricky. You need to book all your tickets at the same time to make sure the entire family is on the same flight. Only some of the flights are offered on the travel portal. I can book 3 tickets using points through the Chase Travel Portal and buy two tickets through Aerolineas Argentinas. If I use my Capital One Venture card to pay for the flights, I may be able to erase them with points anyway. If I use my Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card to buy the two tickets, I will earn 4x points for the purchase or use the $300 travel credit to erase one of the tickets. Remember to create a loyalty account for any flights you buy so you get credit for those miles. 

The bottom line is that you have to be flexible and look for alternatives when traveling as a family. We had a lot of flexibility in the this trip and were able to look for the cheapest dates to travel to the glacier as well. One other tip, when booking excursions or tours, use your Capital One Venture card, if it codes as travel, you can erase the purchase making it FREE. 

*Please use my link if you decide to apply for the Capital One Venture card, you will earn 50,000 bonus points when you spend $3,000. I will earn a referral which will helps keep this blog running. Thank you for your support. 

Smithsonian FREE Museum Day Sept 21, Download tix August 15

Get ready to download your tickets for FREE Museum Day! Tickets will be available starting August 15th for download. Click here to access.  FREE Museum Day is Saturday, September 21st, 2019. 
Participating museums are located across the country and each ticket is good for 2 people. Only one ticket per email address. 

We did a quick search and some of the museums participating included: 

• The Newseum in Washington DC
• All Things Oz Museum in New York 
• Intrepid Sea, Air, Space Museum in New York
• Autry Museum in Los Angeles
• Grammy Museum in Los Angeles 
• Hawaii State Art Museum in Oahu

You can search by state or by zip code here.  So if museums are on your list for September either while traveling or by being a tourist in your own town, free admission is a bonus. 

How I Scored 4 FREE Flights To South America

The mountains ring the city of Santiago, Chile

While you are relaxing on the beach or in the mountains this summer, you may want to start thinking about your next trip. That's the key to scoring FREE flights for your entire family. I started planning for our trip to 2020 Chile more than a year ago. So by the time the flights opened approximately 330 days before the departure date, I was ready with enough points for all the tickets. So how do you do it?

Let's break it down. 

1. Identify where you want to go and which airlines fly there - for South America, American Airlines and their partner, LAN, are the largest carriers. It doesn't mean that United and its network are not an option, American just has more options. Some airlines also charge less miles for the same ticket like Singapore Airlines so it's worth checking a few award charts. In this case, all the airlines were the same. So I chose to focus on American Airlines just for simplicity. 

2. How many points will you need to fly your family there and back. I needed 4 round trip tickets (my older daughter will already be there). Each ticket would probably cost me 60,000 points. You can check the award chart on American's website or just enter some dummy dates and see what pops up. If I got super lucky, it could be less, but 30,000 each way is pretty likely. 

3. So how do you collect 240,000 American Airlines miles? It can seem daunting, but don't despair. I already had 35,000 American Airlines miles in my account from various flights and an old bonus and my husband had 90,000 in his account from various flights and another old bonus. So that was a good start. We could use those for 2 round trip tickets. One of the benefits of Marriott Bonvoy is when you transfer 60,000 points to an airline, you get a bonus 15,000 points. So for every 60,000 Marriott points, you get 25,000 airline miles. If you transfer to United, you will actually get a bit more since those transfer with an additional 10% bonus. We needed just an additional 120,000 airline miles. Fortunately for us, we had lots of Marriott points from using our Starwood credit cards, staying at Marriott hotels and a 100,000 bonus for upgrading to the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant credit card. We focused all of our spend on our Marriott credit cards and American credit cards to build up more points. And bam, we had enough to cover the tickets. Marriott Bonvoy is currently offering 75,000 points for a $3,000 minimum spend on the Brilliant card. The Brilliant card comes with FREE Global Entry and a $300 Marriott credit. It does carry a $450 annual fee. Please use our referral link for any Marrriott Bonvoy credit card. 

4. Now the challenge is to find 4 award travel economy tickets. I start looking as soon as the flights open approximately 330 days before the date. Be sure to open the full calendar because sometimes a reduced mileage ticket will pop up. Even if you can get 2 tickets at a reduced rate, it will save you something. 

Be sure to try different airports too. We usually fly out of Los Angeles because there are more options, but I always try San Diego to see if we get lucky. I also try different destination cities. We could fly into Santiago and return from Buenos Aires or we could fly into Buenos Aires and return from Santiago. In this case, it didn't make any difference. 
The other thing to remember is to be flexible with dates. Our first choice dates didn't show any economy award tickets. I even called American to ask about it and they were stumped. So, we decided to stay a few days longer. 

When I was ready to book, there was one more issue. I could only secure 2 return flights to Los Angeles International Airport at 30,000 miles each. However, a quick search, showed 2 return flights to John Wayne Airport in Orange County at 30,000 miles each. So,  2 of us will fly to LAX and 2 will fly to Orange County. Fortunately, Orange County is on our way home so we will just drive by and pick them up. 

A bit of an inconvenience, yes, but we just booked a trip that would have cost about $5000 for flights alone for about $350 in taxes. We also used the Chase Sapphire Reserve travel credit to erase $300 of those taxes. So really, we just booked all of our flights for $50. 

In my book, that's how we do it at almostFREEfamilytravel.com. In my next post, I'll show you how we scored flights from Santiago to Buenos Aires for FREE with a stop at the largest glacier in the world. 

Earn Delta Miles Or Avios When You Book Your Airbnb

I love Airbnb. For my family of 5 (three teens), hotel rooms no longer work for us. Sure, we could get two rooms, but that can be expensive or use a lot of points. We don't tend to spend much time in the room so it's really just a place to sleep. 

Up until now, it's been difficult to earn miles/points for your airbnb stays. But now you can earn Delta miles or British Airways Avios points. Delta miles never expire so that's a bonus. British Airways Avios are easy to use on dozens of different airlines plus you only need about 8,000 points for short haul flights. When we visited Peru, I used Avios for all of our domestic flights saving me $600 per leg for our family of 5. 

Here's how it works:

1. Use this website link  and be sure your cookies tracking is on. to earn Avios. 
2. If you would like to book, click on the book now button. Avios will give you 3 Avios per dollar spend plus a bonus 500 miles for your first travel booking. 
3. If you would like to host, click on the host now button. Avios will give you a bonus 8,000 miles for your first hosting experience. 
4. Enter your Avios member number 
5. Book your Airbnb

You should see a credit within 60 days. I compared rates on this site with airbnb.com and they were the same. Although, the fine print says they could differ. 

Delta's link works the same way. You earn 1:1 when you book through this link  though it will take 8 weeks for the miles to post to your account. 

You will need to create a British Airways Avios account, Delta Airlines account and/or Airbnb account before you begin the process. 

Remember to use a credit card that gets better points/miles for travel like the Chase Sapphire Reserve or Preferred or a card with a travel purchase eraser like Capital One Venture.

If you decide to open an airbnb account or apply for a Capital One Venture card, please use my referral links. It helps support this blog. Thank you! 

A Great Remodeled Marriott Cat 5 In San Diego

Looking for a great category 5 Marriott in San Diego? The San Diego Marriott Del Mar just underwent a huge remodel so you might want to check it out. Surprisingly, there are actually quite a few category 5's to choose from in San Diego. I was fortunate to be invited to the grand reopening and tour of this property. Though I was not paid for my opinion and the invitation did not affect my review of the hotel. 

Here is the list of category 5 Marriotts in San Diego :

Cost $200-$300
Townsplace Suites Downtown
Courtyard San Diego Gaslamp
Residence Inn Mission Valley
Courtyard San Diego Liberty Station 
San Diego Marriott Mission Valley
Courtyard San Diego Del Mar 
Sheraton Carlsbad Resort and Spa 
Springhill Suites Oceanside 

Cost $100-$200
San Diego Marriott Del Mar 
The Courtyard Downtown, 
The Moxy San Diego Downtown, 
Residence Inn Downtown Gaslamp 
Residence Inn Downtown, 
Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina, 
Fairfield Inn Old Town, 
Townsplace Suites Liberty Station, 
Courtyard San Diego Old Town
Courtyard San Diego Mission Valley
Springhill Suites Mission Valley 
Sheraton La Jolla 
Residence Inn La Jolla 


All of the Townsplace Suites, Residence Inn and Fairfield Inn and Springhill Suites include breakfast. 
Now you can see this newly remodeled Marriott Del Mar does not have the highest rates and it does not offer breakfast so you may be able to find better value at one of the other properties. But this hotel is located by the Del Mar fair, beach and racetrack. And of course, it is newly remodeled with a lovely pool area, excellent Arterra restaurant, and a Starbucks located inside. 

Although the rooms featured a lounge-type sofa and open closet, I was disappointed that the bathrooms still included small sample size shampoo and conditioner bottles instead of large size dispensers. California is moving towards requiring all hotels to use large dispensers by 2023. Many hotels are voluntarily installing the dispensers already to reduce waste and plastic. 

Now Category 5 hotels are important because if you hold a Marriott Bonvoy Boundless credit card or the Marriott Bonvoy Business Amex credit card, you earn a FREE hotel certificate each year on your anniversary good for a stay up to 35,000 points or you guessed it, a category 5. 
If you can maximize the value out of category 5, the certificate can be worth about $300. That's how we do it at almostFREEfamilytravel.com