Wow! How You Can Visit Three National Parks In A Week

Our family of 5 in front of the famous Yellowstone National Park sign

We just got back from an epic National Park trip.....Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, and the Grand Tetons. Yep, all 3 packed into a week and a minivan. I'm going to show you how we did it, the route we took and how I think it could be improved. Plus where we used points and miles and how much this trip actually cost. 

First, this is an amazing vacation. We have traveled all over the world as a family. I am at 51 countries and counting, my 13-year-old has already visited 15 countries and 5 continents. But these parks blew me away. The beauty and the variety of topography, animals, and plants are extraordinary. No wonder these parks were designated protected back in the 1800's. 

Now let's talk specifics and flights. You should always start with flights when you travel because if you use points/miles, your dates need to be flexible. When you are trying to book for an entire family, you are talking multiple seats on the same flight, flexibility is key. 

Since I earned the Southwest Airlines companion pass (buy 1 ticket get 1 free for 2 years) in February, I had enough points to fly my entire family to somewhere close to the parks. But where is the best starting point and ending point? Southwest Airlines offers a route search tool so you can see which airports are available. 

You can see that the airports around the parks are Spokane, Boise, Salt Lake City, and Denver. When I priced out the different cities and flights from San Diego, Spokane and Salt Lake City offered the best prices and routes. And since we wanted to visit Glacier National Park, the farther north we could start the better. 
We flew into Spokane, picked up a rental car and then drove to Kalispell, Montana. It's about a 4.5 hour drive from the airport. But the last 1.5 hours are a bit hairy in the dark so I recommend arriving into Spokane earlier in the day or spending the night in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, a super cute lake town. 

Tip: Fly into Spokane early in the day

We used 15,000 Wyndham points to stay at the Super 8 in Kalispell, Montana. There is a La Quinta in Kalispell as well which is now owned by Wyndham and looks nicer, but it was sold out. The Super 8 was actually just fine. The hotel provided a rollaway bed and breakfast. We were there for 7 hours so it was perfect. 
We left Kalispell, MT at 7am and drove on the highway for 2 hours which follows the park to the south. We had a reservation on the boat at Many Glacier for 11am so unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to take Going To The Sun road through the middle of the park.

Tip: plan your trip so you have time to drive the Sun Road. 

In my specific park post, I'll go into details about Many Glacier and the boat trip. By the time we left Many Glacier, it was dinner time. Fortunately, I had booked a hotel in Browning, Montana. I got one of the last rooms at the Glacier Peaks Hotel And Casino. I booked the room through hotels.com (if you use my referral link, you will get $50 off your first hotels.com booking). Since I have the Capital One Venture card, I earned 10x points on the stay and it gets me one night closer to a FREE night in the hotels.com loyalty program. 
The hotel was fine, had a sofa bed so our family of 5 fit in one room, and breakfast was good. But there is nothing to do in Browning and we kept finding that we headed back to East Glacier. 

Tip: stay in East Glacier instead of Browning. 

The next morning, we drove across Montana to Gardiner. It's a 5.5 hour beautiful drive. This is when the minivan came in handy. It had lots of USB ports and lots of seats. There are some hot springs along the way if you choose to stop. We drove straight to Gardiner which is located minutes from the northeast entrance gate to Yellowstone. 

Our family at the Yellowstone arch

Gardiner is a lovely town just outside the gate. We arrived in time to check in to our Airbnb.com, pick up some dinner and head to the river hot spring inside the park. I'll go into detail about this in my specific Yellowstone National Park post. There is a Super 8 in Gardiner that you can book for just 15,000 points. But it was already sold out so we booked an Airbnb.com which I charged to my Capital One Venture card and erased with points. We spent the next day on a private tour in the Lamar Valley, highly recommend this one, and the following day, we drove through the park. I bought the tour with my Capital One Venture card and erased the purchase. 

Tip: plan early so you can book your hotel with points

We spent the day in the park and exited Yellowstone through the south gate arriving in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in time for dinner. You will definitely want to read my blog post on Jackson Hole. This town is the most unaffordable city in the US. We stayed in a hostel which was awesome and I'll review it in my post. 

View from the top of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort

We spent the next day in Jackson walking the town and river rafting. The following day, we hiked near Jenny Lake and drove to Salt Lake City. We spent the night at a Marriott near the airport using some of the $300 credit from our Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant credit card. The following day, we flew home on Southwest with tickets bought with points. 

Our itinerary looked like this: 

Day 1 - Fly to Spokane, drive to Kalispell, Montana

Day 2 - Glacier National Park 

Day 3 - Drive to Gardiner, Montana

Day 4 - Lamar Valley 

Day 5 - Yellowstone National Park 

Day 6 - Grand Tetons 

Day 7 - Grand Tetons, drive to Salt Lake City 

Day 8 - Fly home 

For hotels: 

• Kalispell on Wyndham points 
• Browning, Montana booked through hotels.com
• Gardiner, Montana booked through Airbnb.com and erased with Capital One Venture points 
• Jackson Hole paid for a hostal
• Salt Lake City used a Marriott credit 

After using points and miles, this trip cost about $2,000 out of pocket for 5 people including the rental car, hotels, food, gas and experiences. Not bad to see our beautiful national parks. Look for my posts with details about each park. If you decide to book on hotels.com or Airbnb.com, please use my referral links. You will get a credit on your first booking and support this blog. 

Thank you! 

Why You Shouldn't Apply For A Southwest Credit Card Right Now

The Southwest personal credit cards just increased their bonus offer to 60,000 points, but I don't think you should pull the trigger just yet. 

The new offer for all personal Southwest credit cards is:

•  40,000 points for spending just $1,000 in the first 3 months 
• 20,000 bonus points when you spend $12,000 in the first year

You can only hold one personal Southwest credit card at a time. The cards are the:

Southwest Priority 

• $149 annual fee for the first year
• $75 Southwest credit 
• 7,500 anniversary points annually
• 2x on Southwest purchases
• 1x on everything else

Southwest Premier

• $99 annual fee
• 6,000 anniversary points annually
• 2x on Southwest purchases
• 1x on everything else

Southwest Plus

• $69 annual fee
• 3,000 anniversary points annually 
• 2x on Southwest purchases
• 1x on everything else

 Southwest also offers two business cards, the Performance and the Premier with 80,000 and 60,000 bonus offers respectively. 

Here's why you should hold off on applying for any of these cards until late October or early November, one word, the companion pass. Okay, that's three words. The companion pass is one of the best perks in the miles and points game. 

The Southwest companion pass allows you to bring a guest along on any flight for FREE for the year you earn the pass and the following year. You earn it by collecting 110,000 Southwest points. 

So if you earn the pass in January, you will get to use it for the rest of the year PLUS the following year. That's almost two years of buy one, get one FREE travel. 

If you earn the pass in November, you get to use it in November and December PLUS the following year. You lose about 10 months of travel! That's a lot. You can check out my blog post to see how I earned the pass this year. I have had the companion pass for the past five years and it has saved me well over $10,000. 

If you hold off applying for one of these personal Southwest cards until November, then you can plan for the bonus to occur in January. If you apply for a business card at the same time and that bonus hits in January too, you will have earned enough for a companion pass good for two years. 

Make sense?

When you are ready, please use my referral link and support my blog. 

How To Avoid Paying The New Hotels.com Redemption Fee

When I book hotels, my first choice is to redeem points, of course. I use awardmapper.com  to find the best value in the city I want to visit. But sometimes, an independent hotel makes more sense either for value, breakfast, location, room size or availability.

If that's the case, then I book through hotels.com. I use the Capital One Venture credit card link so I earn 10x points plus you can double dip with the hotels.com loyalty program. Even if you don't have a Capital One Venture credit card, you can still take advantage of the hotels.com loyalty program.

If you book 10 nights through hotels.com, then you earn 1 FREE night. You basically earn a credit for the average of the 10 nights you booked. In fact, you can use the credit to partially cover the cost of the hotel.

Now you can see I booked the Tru Hilton and Hampton Inn through the hotels.com website. That's because I was collecting 10x points on my Capital One Venture card to erase some of our recent travel purchases. See my prior post that explains how this works.

Starting November 27th, if you book your FREE reward night on hotels.com desktop site, you will be charged a $5 redemption fee. However, if you book your FREE reward night through the app, the fee is waived. No brainer here. $5 is a FREE Starbucks latte in my book.

Hope that helps and please if you apply for the Capital One Venture card, please use my link. Your support helps me continue to serve you.

Supposed To Fly British Airways Today? Here's What You Need To Know

Pilots at British Airways went on strike Monday, Sept. 9th and Tuesday, Sept 10th forcing the airline to cancel ALL their flights for both days. From the British Airways website:  

We understand the frustration and disruption BALPA’s strike action has caused you. After many months of trying to resolve the pay dispute, we are extremely sorry that it has come to this.

Unfortunately, with no detail from BALPA on which pilots would strike, we had no way of predicting how many would come to work or which aircraft they are qualified to fly, so we had no option but to cancel nearly 100 percent our flights.

We remain ready and willing to return to talks with BALPA.

If you were scheduled to fly on British Airways, chances are your flight is canceled. 

Here's what you need to do

1. log in to the ba.com website

2. click on manage my booking 

3. If you booked through a travel agent, contact them directly 

British Airways says it will try to rebook passengers as quickly as possible. 

Our customer teams – supported by additional colleagues - have been working tirelessly to help as many of you as possible and to provide options, including a full refund or re-booking to a different date of travel or alternative airline.

We are offering all affected customers full refunds or the option to re-book to another date of travel or alternative airline.

Flights on BA City Flyer are not affected. Monitor the British Airways website for the latest information. 

New Marriott chart Sept 14

Another big change is coming to the Marriott Bonvoy loyalty program. Whether it's a positive or negative, who knows. Seems like most things with Marriott turn out to be a negative for the customer, but I'll hold off my opinion for now. 

This change involves off peak/standard/peak pricing. Similar to Southwest Airlines, if there is high demand for a flight or hotel room, the number of points you need increases. If there is low demand, the number of points you need decreases. 

The new point chart looks like this: 

Since we don't know yet what will be considered off peak/standard or peak, you may want to book now and then rebook if the points change in your favor. Before Wyndham changed its redemption chart earlier this year, I went ahead and booked our Glacier National Parks hotel and a hotel in New York City. The Glacier hotel didn't change redemption rate at all, but the New York City hotel sure did and it was not in my favor at all. So I got my one hotel night in New York City for 15,000 points. If you booked that same hotel now, it would cost you double at 30,000 points. Big difference.
So bottom line, if you are thinking about booking a Marriott hotel and it is in a popular place or during a popular time of year, you may want to book now just in case.
Good luck!

How You Can Stay 6 Nights FREE At A Wyndham

One of our best family trips was to Peru. This country and people are amazing plus Machu Picchu should be on the top of everyone's bucket list. 

And guess what, this trip was almost FREE. 

We used points and miles for a lot of this trip including our night at the Wyndham Lima Airport.

And now Barclays is offering a 45,000 point bonus on the Wyndham Rewards Visa Signature credit card and waiving the fee for the first year. 

Here are the details:

• $75 fee waived the first year
• $1,000 minimum spend in the first 90 days
• 5x points on Wyndham purchases 
• 2x points on gas, utilities, grocery store (not Target or Walmart)
• 6,000 bonus anniversary points each year 
• No foreign transaction fees 

This offer is a no brainer. Here's how you can use 45,000 points to get up to 6 nights FREE. If you head to Peru, you will most likely need to overnight at the Lima Airport. Most US flights leave early in the morning and most likely you will leave from Lima. But good news, there is a Wyndham hotel connected to this airport just for the weary travelers. 

And you can use points! 

Yes, 15,000 Wyndham points gets you 1 night at the Lima Airport location with breakfast. It's a nice hotel so this deal is pretty sweet. But Wyndham changed it's redemption chart earlier this year and now there are 2,400 hotels that charge just 7,500 points per night.
In the US, they are pretty much what you would imagine. Super 8, Travel Lodge and Days Inn hotels outside of town, but if you are road tripping or checking out colleges, these could save you about $600.
Most include breakfast and most will give you a rollaway to fit a family of 5.
We just stayed in the Super 8 in Kalispell, Montana outside of Glacier National Park. This hotel charges 15,000 per night because it is so close to the park entrance. But they gave us a rollaway bed and breakfast for 5.
You can use the Booking widget to check the list of hotel locations by points.
If you look at international hotels that charge 7,500 points per night, that's where the magic happens.

You could stay all over the United Kingdom for just 7,500 points per night plus breakfast. Heading to China? Wow! There are hotels everywhere for just 7,500. So suddenly your 45,000 bonus is actually worth 6 nights.
Now remember Wyndham brands are budget hotels like Super 8, Travel Lodge, Days Inn, Ramada etc. so you have to keep in mind that the hotel stay is not the experience you are after. It's just a place to lay your head and enjoy a hot shower.

IHG Releases Its New Point Break Hotel List

The 3rd quarter IHG point break hotel list is live. Every quarter, IHG releases a list of hotels called point breaks. This means you can redeem anywhere from 5,000-15,000 points per night for these hotels which should offer a discount.
The new list offers some interesting picks:

At 5,000 points, I found the one in Syracuse intriguing since my daughter goes to school nearby. However, I would have to buy the points since I only have 893 points and the hotel costs less than $100 per night.
However, if you have points sitting around or if you have Chase Ultimate Reward points, you can transfer them to IHG and take advantage. A few years ago, I used 5,000 and booked the Crowne Plaza Newark off the point break list. Pretty sweet! 

At the 10,000 per night level, it got a bit more interesting. Now you have choices in Canada, Peru, Mexico, and outside of New York City.

And at the 15,000 per night level, you have more choice including Paris and Venice. These book up fast. You can only book 2 nights and you have to book them by October 31st, 2019. You can always cancel so it's better to book now.