We’re the Palkes – and we absolutely love to travel. And even more than that, we love creating family experiences for our daughter, Rachael, and we love to learn. Joe and I (Laura) are both career-long educators – Joe in elementary P.E. and me in secondary Language Arts. So, when COVID-19 hit, we had a choice to make. We could sit and wallow in failed travel plans and the struggles with remote learning (as both teachers and parents), or we could make the most of it and create a Plan B. We opted to move forward with Plan B (and even, at times, a Plan C and D). As a family, we attempted to make the most of our time at home and our changed travel plans – and this blog was born! So, we thought we would share our ‘distance learning’ journey with you – through travel, food and family – as well as how we go about doing it through points. We’d love for you to come along for the ride!
There are 3 types of miles and points that you can collect: hotel points, airline miles and bank points. There is also one more type of reward – cash back. All four of these rewards can be great, but, again, you must be able to pay off your credit card in full each month. If you are paying interest on your credit card, your rewards will cost you a lot more than just paying for a flight/hotel stay.
1: Airline miles. These are probably the most familiar for many people. Each airline has their own program, and most of the time, the currency is called miles in the United States. Delta Skymiles, United Mileage Plus, AAdvantage, Southwest Rapid Rewards, Jetblue True Blue, Alaska Mileage Plan, are the programs of US carriers. There are others in the US and many others around the globe.
The unfortunate thing with airline miles is you are not able to combine them across airlines. In other words, after you earn points, you have to be able to use them, and each airline sets their own ‘cost’ / amount of points it takes to fly. Some flights are cheap, some flights are more expensive. It is up to you to decide how you want to use your accumulated points. There are some great deals to be found, but also there are some places where it would be wiser to simply buy a ticket. Even since we’ve started traveling with points, we still purchase plane tickets on occasion.
2: Hotels. The second type of travel credit card you can get is for a hotel. There are cards for Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG family of hotels, and others. As the name suggests, hotel cards help you earn points for free hotel rooms. They work the same as an airline card – you get a little bit of a rebate on every purchase, along with a big sign-up bonus.
One other perk several hotel cards have is a “free” annual night when you pay the annual fee. Now, is this night actually “free”/cost $0? No, it is not ‘free’, but it still can be valuable. For example, if a card’s annual fee is $89 and you need to book a $200 hotel room, you can use your “free” annual night and you would ultimately save a lot of money. That said, if you are not going to use the ‘free’ reward night, or you use it on a $78 hotel room (less than your cost for the card), you would be losing money. This is not recommended.
3: Bank Credit Card. The third type of travel credit card is the bank credit card. With these credit cards, you can use them to take money off of your credit card bill, usually around 1%. You can also use the points you earn through the bank’s “travel portal”. With this, you pay per point for flights, hotels and car rentals. On these redemptions, you would usually earn 1-1.5 cents per point. If this were the case, a $300 flight would cost/ use up between 20,000-30,000 points.
There is a third way that several banks let you redeem points, and that is to transfer points to other airline and hotel programs. This can be a really valuable option, and one we tend to use fairly frequently. Using this transfer method, you can find an expensive flight or a really nice hotel room that you don’t want to pay for, but find it at a reasonable price via points, through the actual airline or actual hotel’s website.
Now, if you have enough points in that program you can (and should) use those. However, if you don’t quite have enough to cover the ticket(s) with only points you have through the airline card, you may be able to transfer over bank points to that same airline program, and be able to book your flight or hotel room with nothing out-of-pocket. The problem is, not all banks let you transfer, and not all airlines and hotels let you transfer. The good news, is each bank card provides a list that tells us where your points are able to transfer. More details with that, however, will appear in another post. Stay tuned!
As with many of the dishes we’ve made for international dining experiences, I would have to defer to someone else for how to pronounce what we made. 🙂 This time, Joe made for us Steak au Poivre from Food Network’s Alton Brown’s recipe. Wow. Joe even commented this may have been the best steak he’s ever eaten – and that’s saying a lot. The thicker steak, pan sauce and pepper crust was a combination I wasn’t necessarily expecting to like so much, but it was absolutely delicious!
LESSONS LEARNED: 1. When using a metal meat tenderizer to crush the peppercorn on a cutting board (as Mr. Brown suggests), it is a great way to let loose after a long week, but also be sure to warn those in your household with sensitive ears. Wow – that was loud!
2. We took advantage of the USDA prime filets being on sale at Sam’s Club, otherwise this dish could be pretty expensive.
3. The steak was a lot thicker than what we normally use, so it needed to cook longer than normal. Thankfully, Joe allowed for this extra time, so we didn’t eat dinner at 8:00 p.m.
4. It’s worth noting that, while the recipe calls for cognac in the pan sauce, we used homemade beef stock for the base, and it worked really well.
Joe also made our own ‘frites’ for the meal. Again, please don’t ask me for the correct pronunciation of this word, but I do know it could mean scrumptious. 🙂 There’s just something about homemade ‘French’ fries.
(Lessons Continued) 5. Soaking the potatoes in water for awhile before baking them for frites serves to remove some of the starch from the potatoes. Apparently, this allows the frites a better chance to be the right amount of browned and crispy.
Even though we don’t always include dessert with our international meals, we decided that Rachael needed to try crème brûlée. This recipe for Crème Brûlée was easy to follow and absolutely delicious! The hardest part of making this dessert is the fact it is made in stages – you want to be able to eat it right away! Waiting the several hours to allow it to cool in the refrigerator makes it even more delicious. That way, the fresh, hot crispy brûlée on top of a semi-warm/cooled custard is a unique delight.
(Lessons Continued) 6. When the torch runs out of gas, using the broiler in the oven is an okay substitute for that crispy cover of sugar – the brûlée. Rachael wasn’t a huge fan of it – saying some parts were not crispy enough and others were a bit too burned. Hmmm…we’ll convert her yet, or Joe and I will get to eat more dessert when we make this in the future. 🙂
Water bath = a must.
Can you smell that crisp?
Once again, we rounded out our meal with a healthy green vegetable, broccoli, as we knew Rachael would eat it, and it would add some nice color. Overall, Rachael really enjoyed the steak (sans peppercorn – cracked or otherwise – and the pan sauce), and ate all of her meal very well. So, naturally, I had to document it.
Rachael also wanted me to share with you two of the items Joe and I bought for her when we visited France several years ago – perfume and a small replica of the Eiffel Tower. She has requested to actually visit the Eiffel Tower in person for her 10th birthday, so we’ll hopefully be writing about a trip to France someday.
*NOTE: We completed this day road trip during the summer, but I can imagine the colored foliage is amazingly beautiful along this same route, when taken in the fall. We may have to try it out – along with a slightly altered checklist. 🙂 *
When the stay-at-home order was lifted in Minnesota, we needed to get out of the house, but also stay socially-distant from others. So, we took a day to visit our state’s beautiful North Shore of Lake Superior. Duluth is about 2 hours from our house, so doable in a day. We bought an annual Minnesota State Park pass online the night before, Joe created an “I Spy” sort of checklist for the car and our stops, and we hit the road the following day.
Joe created an “I Spy” sort of checklist for Rachael.
During the drive north, we looked up places to stop on the “Scenic Highway 61 Northshore” using the North Shore Visitor website. Our first stop, just north of Duluth, was Brighton Beach. Its ‘beach’ is covered with mostly smooth rocks – perfect to attempt skipping rocks into the lake. Since it was a sunny, beautiful Saturday, there were a lot of people there, but the area was large enough to be able to stay safely away from others. Rachael loved jumping among the larger rocks, and even found a few interesting (to her) smaller rocks to add to her budding collection.
Joe demonstrating.
Searching for the perfect rock to skip.
We continued north, on the scenic route of Highway 61. Our next stop was Stoney Point, just off a side road, where there was an outcropping of larger rocks. Following the lead of other visitors, we parked along the edge of the road, and explored the large boulders in the area for a short while.
Two Harbors was the next stop on Highway 61 – about 26 miles north of Duluth (which is where they start the annual Grandma’s Marathon). The website mentioned a lighthouse in Two Harbors, and since we didn’t know if we would be able to make it all the way to Split Rock, we wanted to see a lighthouse on this trip. Google took us through a rough, town road to the much nicer parking area for the trail that went along the bay, near the Light House (which turns out to be a Bed & Breakfast). Stretching out from the shore was a large cement ‘break water’/wave break, near where a large cargo ship was docked and being loaded. We enjoyed walking out on it – and getting sprayed by a few waves that splashed up on the structure. Along the shoreline in this area of Two Harbors, the rocks were whiter than those further south. So, Rachael found a few keepers from this stretch as well.
Rach on the wave break.
It was a windy day!
Gooseberry Falls was our next destination. There, we went hiking to see the Upper and Lower Gooseberry Falls. They were really flowing well, due to a recent rain, and we could get really close to them – so close, you could feel the spray of the water. It was both great exercise and an enjoyable walk through the forest, along the Gooseberry River, and seeing where it emptied into Lake Superior. There were parking lots available a bit closer to the falls themselves, but we ended up parking a further into the park – so were able to go on a longer hike.
The falls were abundant!
Superior in the distance.
When we arrived at Split Rock Lighthouse, it was already closed for the day, so we weren’t able to park there, or even walk around the grounds of the actual light house. We were still able to access other parts of the State Park, however, so took a short walk from the parking lot to the shoreline. There, Rachael was once again able to walk around on the rock ledges, with Split Rock Light House perched in the distance. The sun was starting to set, so after a few obligatory pictures, we were on our way back south.
Panoramic view of Split Rock Lighthouse (L) and Rachael (R) on the rocks.
On our way up, we noticed the famous, original Betty’s Pies was open, so we called ahead a dinner and pie order. Thankfully, both of Rachael’s first two pie choices were not available, because she was ‘forced’ to try their French Blueberry pie. Before she was done eating her dinner, Joe and I snagged a small sample before we handed over her slice. Wow. It was one of the best pies any of us had ever tasted – hands down – and Rachael had absolutely no trouble eating her entire slice. Their French Blueberry was blueberry pie on a graham cracker crust, with a second layer that was like creamy, soft cheesecake, and of course, all topped with whipped cream. It was absolutely delicious. We all enjoyed it so much, Joe went back in to buy an entire pie just before they closed for the day. ☺
After a long day of exploring, we returned home exhausted, but it was a good day.
We have always been fans of the char siu pork that we made for our Chinese dining choice, so we thought that a different recipe labeled “char siu” would most likely also be pretty tasty. So, when we decided to try out some Vietnamese food, we went with the Char Siu Chicken Banh Mi. The video that is linked in the recipe, created by the chef/cookbook author Andrea Nguyen, is very helpful in knowing what the final product should look like. Ms. Nguyen also includes several helpful tips and things to look for as you’re creating the sandwich.
The banh mi was a robust, flavorful sandwich, with all sorts of toppings that punched through on their own. With the layers of mayo and avocado coating the bottom of the crusty bread, with the sweet, tender char siu chicken, topped with the pickled daikon and carrots, cucumber slices and cilantro was a delicious combination.
Assembled Bahn Mi & egg roll
LESSONS LEARNED:
1. Multi-colored carrots from the garden are really cool. 🙂 The pictured carrots were one of the few vegetables that survived this year. Homegrown carrots are not only flavorful, they also add a lot of color.
Straight from the garden.
A red peel = orange inside
2. This is the second time we’ve pickled something in the past couple of weeks – and both have been pretty simple and ended up a really valuable and tasty addition to the dish. It helps that pickling seems to be a pretty ‘forgiving’ treatment of vegetables.
Pickling & Marinading
Rachael didn’t exactly care for ‘massaging’ in the salt and sugar.
The toppings awaiting assembly.
3. The recipe called for baking the sandwich rolls in the oven for several minutes. I would imagine it was intended to crisp up the bread – and it was successful. As someone who has a temporary crown in her mouth, and usually prefers bread on the softer side, I had to smoosh the bread down some, to make it a bit less crusty-feeling. Crunching it down also made it easier to actually fit into my mouth. 🙂
Bread at the market.
Buns in the oven!
4. The egg roll probably wasn’t needed to complete the meal, as the banh mi is big enough to be a meal of its own. However, we still included the egg roll, simply because Que Viet’s egg rolls (in Northeast Minneapolis) are the best we’ve ever tasted. We were first introduced to them at the State Fair Food Parade a couple of weeks ago, so when we found out they were a Vietnamese restaurant, we knew it was a must. We bought them in the afternoon, and discovered baking them for about 15 minutes after keeping them in the refrigerator worked really well.
5. Again, in the interest of making sure we were able to find some Maggi seasoning sauce (that Chef Nguyen recommends in the recipe video) and a few other authentic ingredients, we paid a visit to the local Ha Tien Super Market in St. Paul. It was a pretty busy grocery store, but they had anything you could possibly want for an authentic Asian recipe, so it was perfect!
Day 4: Teddy Roosevelt National Park – Friend’s house in northern North Dakota
We were wondering (and hoping) if we were going to see any buffalo in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The woman at the Ranger Station told us we could see a lot of prairie dogs, but wasn’t sure if the buffalo would be moving around as it was unseasonably warm for March. Part of the large drive-through loop was closed due to a road outage, and had been for a while. So, we headed off to drive the 23 miles in, 23 miles out the route they had open. The first thing we saw was a lone buffalo, a little way off the road, laying there and chewing his cud. We had seen a buffalo!
When my family had traveled here 25+ years ago, I remembered seeing buffalo walking on the road with our car, so even though Rachael was able to see her first buffalo, I knew I would be a bit disappointed for her if we didn’t see more. We kept driving and less than a quarter mile later, we saw three or four buffalo, on a distant ridge. So, more buffalo, but not super close. Moving on, Rachael was pretty excited to see a large prairie dog town and loved snapping a few pictures of them using our camera.
R: The Prairie Dogs were so cute. We saw a lot of Prairie Dogs.
On our way to the turn-around point, we saw a few more buffalo, a few horses, a lot more prairie dogs, and beautiful scenery. We reached the barricades in the road, so we took that as our cue to turn around. Since we were driving the exact same route on the way back, we went a bit more quickly. However, we decided to stop at a parking lot where there was a path to hike. The walk was pretty muddy in places, but was completely worth it. The view from the top was amazing – and we even saw a few buffalo slowly moving along in the distance, across the river, and a bald eagle flew overhead. Stunning.
Panoramic view from the top of our mini hike.
After our hike – and much needed stretch break – we continued on the road, when Joe slammed on the brakes. There was a buffalo, about 30 feet off the road. Rachael and I bounded out of the car and crossed the road to get a bit closer. Not daring to go too close and startle it, we stopped at the edge of the road to take a few pictures. He just kept chewing, and even looked toward us and snorted at us! So, we continued on, and as we were within the last few miles of the drive, we saw the herd. They were quite a distance from the road, but the whole time we were watching them, they kept meandering closer. As they did, we noticed the herd was a lot larger than we first realized. Within the area we could see, there were at least 40-50 buffalo. It was a great final sighting in Teddy Roosevelt National Park.
R: We heard a Bison snort! We saw a herd of Bison!
Some of the buffalo herd we saw near the entrance/exit to the park.
From there, we continued to far north, North Dakota (State #19 for Rachael), to Bottineau, to stay with our friends on the farm for a couple of days. During our time there, since it was about 5 miles from the Canadian border, we brought along our passports so Rachael could get her first stamp in it. However, the afternoon we arrived, the news reported that the border would be closing the next morning. Despite our friend Ben’s connections with the Border Patrol, we were only able to get a picture near the border, rather than across it, into another country. This was due to COVID-19, and the border was set to be closed until mid-June.
R: We saw a Coyote in the fields at [our friend’s house]. North Dakota was so flat that Dad could drive with no hands!
After a few days on the farm, we made the trek home!
We tried out some middle-eastern cuisine this time around, and tried our hand at a simple Beef Kofta recipe, and ultimately mixed it into a Traditional Lebanese Fattoush Salad. It was the perfect, quick and easy weeknight meal after our first day back at school for teacher meetings and planning, and was, overall a delicious and very flavorful trip to Lebanon.
Beef Kofta and Fattoush Salad.
LESSONS LEARNED: 1. The salad dressing on the vegetables was full of flavor. The pomegranate molasses added a hint of sweet. However, due to my own ‘user error’ the dressing became a bit heavy-handed. The salad recipe said to brush dressing on to the pita bread. After doing so, and because it looked more like a paste than a liquid (pictured), it didn’t look like we had enough to adequately dress the salad. So, Rachael helped me stir up another quick batch. On hindsight, even though we are dressing lovers in our house, I made and used a bit too much of it. The lemon juice we previously squeezed on the veggies would have most certainly loosened up the pasty dressing in the long run – I was just a bit short sighted. 🙂
1B. We omitted the mint and spring onions from our salad. I would imagine either or both of those ingredients would have ramped up the flavor even more, but we aren’t super fans of either ingredient raw.
Dressing ingredients.
Dressing was pasty.
Made in Lebanon.
Pita with dressing; ready for the grill to make homemade pita chips.
The final Fattoush salad – overall tasty!
2. Even though we didn’t make the falafel ourselves (more on the store later), they would have tasted much better had they been straight from the fryer. 🙂
3. A tasty addition to the meal was grilling a couple plain circles of pocket bread to dip in the spinach artichoke hummus. Delicious!
4. When grilling the kofta, beware of flare ups on the grill. The recipe calls for meat with high fat content, so naturally, the fat dripping down causes the extra flames.
5. This recipe calls for the kofta to be grilled ‘on each side’ for 6 minutes. Well, these are shaped like torpedoes, so it is tough to tell how many ‘sides’ there are. 🙂 Because each kabob was so thick, it was hard for Joe to know when they were done enough, so he cooked them longer than 6 minutes on rotation, and they were plenty done.
Pre-cooked kofta
6. Rachael enjoys cutting vegetables. In her own words “Even though I don’t like salads, I really like cutting up the veggies!” She also really enjoyed tossing and arranging the salad (even though she wouldn’t even touch it). Ultimately, if Rachael helps prepare the meal – in ways she finds interesting – she does a much better job eating. 🙂
7. It adds a fun extension to our ‘distance learning’ when we can visit an authentic grocery store in preparation of the meal.
So, in the interest of making the meal as authentic as possible, we also made a trip to the renown Holy Land Deli in northeast Minneapolis, to buy some specific ingredients the recipe called for. This was mine and Rachael’s first time visiting or shopping at Holy Land, and it was all that is advertised. Not only did they have the Lebanese pita bread (located in an entire alcove of several kinds of pita and pocket breads), sumac spice and pomegranate molasses that we were looking for, we also bought a package of pre-made falafel to try (because, why not?) and some of their famous hummus. As the only semi-connoisseur of hummus in my family, I got to choose the flavor – I went with spinach and artichoke. The hummus was the eventual perfect combination with some grilled pita bread. The actual restaurant part of the deli smelled amazing! Even though it was 3:00 p.m., and I wasn’t even close to hungry, it made my mouth water seeing people’s plates. We will definitely be back for the prepared food someday.
Just half of the impressive pocket bread alcove at Holy Land Deli.
If you have now decided to travel by points, even before you check your credit score or apply for credit cards, the first thing you should do: make a goal. As teachers, we have SMART goals in our classroom, so we’ve worked with them before. I would say creating a SMART goal for your travel is a solid first step.
S: SPECIFIC. For Laura and I, our first trip by points was to go to Europe (London, Paris, Monaco, and Dublin) in first or business class (which meant we would be able to lie flat on our long haul flight across the Atlantic). We also wanted to stay in nicer hotels for 10-14 days.
M: MEASURABLE. We wanted to have enough points for the airfare and hotels, and we knew we wanted to travel during the summer of 2017. So, this meant I needed to accrue the points about 11-12 months before we wanted to travel, in order to book the tickets for the best price/point value. I figured we needed 250,000-300,000 United points in order to do this. For hotels, we used points earned through credit cards, as well as free night bonuses.
A: ACHIEVABLE. Was this achievable or attainable? Yes, I had no doubt we could get this done in a year. Not only because we were committed to doing so, but also doing so while continuing to pay our full monthly credit card bills.
R: REALISTIC. Was this realistic? Yes. After I did some research, we knew we could definitely get enough points for a trip to Europe within a year’s time. We created a plan and stuck with it. Not only were we able to earn enough points for our travel goals, but we were also even able to get started on our next travel goal – Southern California/Disneyland for Summer 2018.
T: TIMELY or TIME SENSITIVE. As teachers, our main travel window is, logically, during the summer – usually between mid-June and mid-August, so we had a specific time frame during which we could travel. This meant that we also had an idea of when we needed to have the points available to use, so we could travel during that window of time. So, this was an easy part to decide.
So, to recap our SMART goal for our European Trip:
S: Travel to Europe in business or first class; stay for 10-14 days in nicer hotels.
M: My calculations were that we needed 250,000+ United Miles, 2 Free Hyatt nights, 120,000 IHG points, 200,000 Marriott points (We already had these points from a credit card I’ve had awhile), and 100,000 Hilton points.
A: Earn the points, so we could book before flight prices increased for all of us who like to travel during summer break.
R: Joe – 4 credit card sign-ups; Laura – 4 credit card sign-ups. That’s realistic and also within credit card companies’ comfort level.
T: One year (11-12 months) to collect all the needed points.
So, what is your SMART travel goal? Once you have thought through more of what you would like to work toward with points, I am more than happy to help you figure out a plan to get there. With a lot of planning and dreaming, and also some work – it is possible!
Our taste buds traveled south of the border to try our hand at traditional Mexican street tacos – complete with homemade tortillas, pickled onions and homemade salsa. Joe deserves a gold medal for his efforts with this meal. 🙂 He made his own tortilla press in the morning, and then started marinading and cooking different pieces at 1:30 p.m., and we ate around 6:30 p.m. Here are some pictures of Rachael helping Joe finish up his own tortilla press.
Joe decided to make his own tortilla press for the occasion. Rachael helped him with some steps, and was an adorable model for the finished version.
Rachael and I helped at times, and helped make the tortillas, but Joe was the captain. Whew! In the end, the tacos were absolutely delicious (and pretty!), but not without a few hiccups along the way.
Rachael enjoyed the meat, but decided against even trying any of the toppings. She mostly enjoyed eating lime-touched tortilla chips. 🙂
LESSONS LEARNED:
* We are not professional tortilla makers. 🙂 We used this recipe for our tortillas, and it turned out to be remarkably similar to what was on the back of the corn masa bag. After we were all ready to go with the tortilla press, the dough kept sticking to the plastic bag or wax paper we used as a buffer for the press. We made our way from about 18 balls of dough, to making about 9 usable tortillas. Uffda. Our biggest issue was we didn’t know what texture the dough needed to be before rolling and pressing it. Word to the wise: you need to use more water than you think. After making several adjustments, we had some nice tortillas, and they tasted good. We may even try making these again sometime, just to apply what we learned and show ourselves we can do it.
The early dough often stuck to the wax paper.
Most of our failed attempts.
The few. The finished. The useable Palke tortillas.
Our tortilla process was rough, to say the least. But in the end, we managed to make some useable (and quite tasty) tortillas!
* It turns out there is a big difference between inside skirt steak and outside skirt steak. We bought inside skirt steak, which is all that was at the store, but we didn’t think anything of it. We had no idea that it has a very different chew than outside skirt steak. Inside is much tougher. So, after discovering we all had a hard time chewing the meat, Joe cut it into much smaller pieces, and that made it a lot easier to chew.
Grilling the skirt steak on the Big Green Egg. It worked great!
* We are folks who usually enjoy the onion flavor in our food, but not so much the actual onions. However, including the quick-pickled red onion was a fantastic addition. They literally made the taco. The extra crunch it provided (and color!) was tasty – and didn’t leave the lingering onion taste in your mouth that you get with raw onions. Our batch of pickled onions was big enough to bottle up the leftovers, and we will definitely be using them again – maybe on burgers? Or perhaps another go at street tacos.
Our pickled onion mix, cooking together. The jalapeños did not add too much spice – just right for me and my non-spice-loving taste buds.
* Homemade salsa is so delicious. We made this salsa recipe and found that grilling the veggies helped the flavor punch through. It definitely had a kick to it, but I (Laura – who can’t take too much spice), ate a whole portion of it with chips. 🙂
Our homemade salsa! This made a huge batch, so we’re still enjoying the leftovers.
* Rachael ate most of her meat portion – after she could chew it. She wasn’t much of a fan of the Cotija cheese, but went for the ultra plain version of the taco – without onion or cilantro or salsa.
Our tradition: Finding and marking the food’s country on the map.
What are points and miles? They are currencies. Each mile/point can be redeemed for something of value (cash, hotel nights or airplane tickets). Each set of points or miles is worth a different amount – some are worth more, some are worth less, some have a fixed value, and some are variable. It is like the difference between the GBP (British Pound) and USD (US Dollar).
First things first: am I suggesting that you are going to get to fly all over the world for free? Sorry – no. I am, however, going to try to help you significantly reduce the cost of your trips. We may not agree on everything I write here, and that is fine. You have to find what works best for your travel wants and needs.
LESSON #1: Using a credit card to make purchases is one of the best ways to get LOTS of miles/points.I also believe that credit cards can give you great value for your money, and, if used responsibly, they can be even better than cash. Here’s why: If you buy a product with cash or a debit card, you get that item you bought – period. With credit cards, you can buy the same item, get what you paid for, and get a small rebate in points/miles/cash.
So, how does that work? The bank charges the business who sold you the item, a “swipe fee” for each transaction. They also can make money from fees (the annual fee they charge cardholders) and interest from people who pay late or don’t fully pay each month. Before we go any further:If you cannot pay your credit card off each month, please stop reading now. You will lose money on travel if you are paying interest on your credit card. Period.
LESSON #2:Take advantage of credit card sign up bonuses. This is where you can get the most points: you spend X amount of money, in Y amount of time, and the credit card company gives you Z amount of points/miles. Many times, this comes with an annual fee, and I would suggest this is not as big a deal as you think it may be. I know there are a lot of people who ask: Why would I ever pay $100 for a credit card – I don’t want to pay to use my own money! Consider this: if you pay the $100 fee, and within 3 months, you have $300+. Me? I would do it every chance I get. That $300+ is what you would get back in points/miles. To me, that’s a great investment.
LESSON #3: Know which credit card to use for each purchase. The second way to earn miles/points with credit cards is with everyday spending. This is the rebate I was talking about earlier. If I go to the gas station and fill up, I will get a full tank and a small rebate – in miles/points. Each credit card offers a different rebate, so you need to figure out what is best for you. If this is overwhelming to you, I love figuring out the best deal for us and others. Just drop a comment or question below, and I’d be happy to help you out.
After you’ve worked through these three lessons, then, you want to be sure you have a clear travel goal. I’ll talk about things to consider when deciding on your goal in a future post.
Day 3: Monday, March 16 West Yellowstone -to- Glendive, MT
The night before, we noticed there was a National Park office in West Yellowstone, so we were hoping it would be open the following day to get a stamp in Rachael’s National Park passport. When we got to the building the next day, we discovered it was closed due to COVID-19. Just as we were about to pack it in and leave, we noticed a worker opening the door for one of their colleagues. Joe quickly got her attention and asked if we could get a stamp for our daughter. I made sure that Rachael was visible, so she knew we were telling the truth. ☺ The woman graciously let us in to get Rachael’s first stamp. Success!
We made our way back along the west edge of Yellowstone since the park does not open to visitors until much later in the spring. Beautiful scenery, the mountains and streams rushing with fresh runoff, accompanied our drive along Highway 191. It was full of magnificent early-springtime views, and thankfully, did not live up to the ‘icy gauntlet’ name as the beautiful sun shone during the day.
After we enjoyed the views of the outskirts of Yellowstone, we trekked back east across Montana to Glendive for the night.
