San Antonio Riverwalk

Posted on by David Cox

I had the opportunity to take a business trip to San Antonio and the thing I was most excited about was revisiting the Riverwalk. It had been probably around 25 years since I had been there when my wife and I took a day trip there with my parents years ago. I had remembered it as beautiful, full of life and surprising cool on what was a pretty hot summer day. It was every bit as lovely as I remembered and probably even better than it was 25 years ago.

I arrived in San Antonio in the early afternoon and was dropped off at my hotel, the Springhill Suites by Marriott near the Henry B Gonzales Convention Center. My first impressions of San Antonio weren’t great. There are a lot of empty lots in the area directly west of the convention center. There were a lot of unimpressive buildings and surface parking lots and frankly it looked like San Antonio was dilapidated. It reminded me of so many midwestern cities that deteriorated following the closure of big manufacturing plants in those cities. My hometown is one which is still recovering from plant closures dating back to the 80s, and I am well aware of this ‘look’. Early on in the trip, I did a decent amount of walking along the sidewalks in the area around the Riverwalk and it just wasn’t enjoyable at all. There didn’t seem to be any cohesive feeling that you get from walking around a downtown area with block to block buildings like you get when walking along the downtowns of Chicago, New York or San Francisco. I think the reason for this, however, was that in San Antonio all of the energy of this city is centered around the Riverwalk.

Surface parking lots are necessary in cities, but the number here seemed excessive.
A gravel parking lot with shipping containers is not what you expect to see in a vibrant city center.

As soon as I had a chance, I headed to the Riverwalk, and it was more impressive than I remembered. The first thing that I noticed was just how close the walkway is to the water. Living in a city that is hit almost yearly with floods, this is impressive. In my hometown, we have some bike paths that are deliberately built 20 feet above normal river level, so that they don’t flood when the river rises (not all of our paths are high enough to avoid flooding). I live in the Quad-Cities, which is built around the Mississippi River. In our area, the height of the river can vary 15 feet over the course of a year. Designs of parks along the Mississippi take this into account and this makes the river feel somewhat distant, but in San Antonio, you can literally sit on the walk and touch the water.

This is the dam on the downstream side of the downtown area.

What makes this possible is some really impressive engineering, involving dams and an enormous flood tunnel. They essentially turned this section of the San Antonio River into a canal by being able to control the river level so effectively. The tunnel is 24 foot diameter bored tunnel approximately 140 feet deep that works as an inverted siphon. It’s a brilliant design that helps keep this river from overflowing.

This is the outlet of the flood tunnel, it’s a couple of miles downstream of the downtown.

The second thing that hit me is just how close restaurants and bars are to the river. There just aren’t that many places where someone can sit at a restaurant while dining directly next to a river, but there are quite a few restaurants along the Riverwalk where you can do just that. Even on weekdays, these restaurants seemed to get a decent amount of business. They seem incredibly romantic, but since I was traveling alone, I had no desire to dine in a romantic atmosphere. I instead did what any self-respecting solo man on a business trip would do, I ate at bars.

Also impressive are all of the little touches that are at virtually every point along the Riverwalk. There are art pieces, statues, and planters everywhere. Anytime your eyes wonder, they come across something interesting and beautiful. Sometimes its a bright mural sized painting adding contrast to the stone walls.

Sometimes its an enormous statue in the middle of a set of bridges.

Sometimes its a set of unique light fixture illuminating the path.

And sometimes, its a fountain making the underside of a bridge beautiful. I mean, honestly, when was the last time you were impressed by the underside of a bridge.

I was even impressed by where they stored the boats that they used for tours.

There are a lot of these tourist boats that float around the Riverwalk loop in the downtown area.
They park these things in rooms under the bridges or parking lots.

There are these storage and maintenance areas under parking lots and streets in the area where these boats operate. It is such a unique solution to use the space under the streets for what is essentially maintenance garages.

The “garage” for the boats is under the street.
Here is another maintenance area under a street.

Throughout the Riverwalk area, there are flower planters and trees that not only offer beauty, but also provide shade. I don’t know if there is an actual temperature difference between the temperature in a parking lot in San Antonio and the temperature in the Riverwalk, but I would say that it feels like about 10 degrees cooler by the river.

I also loved the fact that stone was used throughout the Riverwalk area. It seems like an obvious choice to use the same material all along the river, but it’s literally miles of stone. Maybe this is an extremely common type of stone in San Antonio, but they used a ton of it and it makes everything feel cohesive.

Oh, and there are water features – everywhere! I love these kinds of water features. They add to a cooling effect by creating some mist in the air and they also provide noise that has an amazing ability to calm the soul.

There are so many water features, they even hide some in grottos.

One of my favorite things along the Riverwalk was the Amphitheatre that straddled the San Antonio River. On one side, there is a raised stage right on the edge of the river and on the other is a seating section that looks like it had capacity for a few hundred people. The seating has a unique stone and grass layout, which means that if you were attending a show there, you would be seated on grass. I imagine that would be comfortable, but you might be a little worried about grass stains on your pants. There weren’t any shows there during my stay in San Antonio, but I hope it gets used a lot because it is very beautiful and unique.

Stage for the Amphitheater
Seating for the Amphitheater

I really love the Riverwalk area in San Antonio and I can see why so many shops, bars and restaurants have located themselves around it. The Riverwalk is one of those amazing examples of how important city planning and engineering can be to the vitality of a city. San Antonio could have easily just decided that they would build enormous flood walls or giant berms to prevent flooding and if they had done that then the area certainly wouldn’t be the commercial success it is today. Creative engineering and great design created a space that is truly unique, and it is definitely a fantastic reason to visit San Antonio if you get the chance.

Points Check May 2023

Posted on by David Cox

This was the second straight month of a huge jump in value of points, miles and cash back. In all fairness, we had probably opened way too many accounts at once. It turned out to be a lot to keep track of and it left a lot of room to make mistakes. I think at one point we had 5 credit cards that we were trying to get sign up bonuses on. That’s probably not something we’re going to want to do too often, if ever again. But it did mean that we jumped from a value of points, miles and cash back of around $1,400 in December to $10,600 in May.

US Business Leverage Card

I applied for the US Bank Business Leverage Card and the application was accepted. The US Bank Business Leverage Card is a cash back card that gives 2x on your top 2 spending categories each month and 1x on everything else. It has a $750 bonus after $7,500 in spending in the first 4 months. It also has a $95 annual fee which is waived for the first year. It’s not an awesome card, but it helps us with two things, accumulating cash we can use on our trip to Europe, and with the $7,500 minimum spend it slows down this torrid pace of opening new cards we had earlier in the year.

A Minor Redemption and a Business Trip

I had one small redemption this month and that was to buy skip the line tickets for the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel. For that I spent $100 of cash back.

I went on a business trip this month which boosted my mileage totals. I received 6,700 Bonvoy points by staying at the Springhill Suites Downtown/Riverwalk for 4 nights. I also earned 3,440 American Airlines miles by flying with American Airlines.

Anyway, on to the Points Check!

Jenn spent $400 on her Chase Ink Unlimited Card and earned 600 Ultimate Reward Points, she also spent $500 on her Ink Cash Card and earned 2,100 Ultimate Reward Points. Jenn also spent around $900 on her Wyndham Business Earner Card and earned around 2,500 Wyndham points and the 45,000 point sign up bonus. Jenn’s United Business Card renewed and she paid the $99 annual fee but she did get the 5000 point anniversary bonus for holding the business and personal card. Jenn also spent over $3,600 on her Delta Business Card and earned around 3,900 miles and the 75,000 mile sign up bonus.

I spent less than $300 on my Citi Premier Card and earned almost 500 Citi Thank You Points. I also spent $1,400 on my USBank Business Leverage card and earned around $23 in cash back. I spent less than $400 on my USBank Altitude Card and earned almost 600 points and the 50,000 point bonus. Since, I can’t figure any reasonable way to get more than 1 cent per point on those points, I’m treating it like cash back, so I’m counting that as earning $506.

At the end of the month, this left us with 25,000 Citi Thank You points, 45,700 United miles, 80,000 Delta miles, 5,300 American Airlines miles, 58,300 Marriott Bonvoy points, 1,600 Hyatt Points, 274,900 Ultimate Reward points, 49,500 Wyndham points, 83,300 Capital One Venture miles and $470 in Cash Back. By using the Points Guy valuations located at https://thepointsguy.com/guide/monthly-valuations/ that comes to a total value of $10,650. Those points are in a number of programs and it might seem difficult to use those points easily, however, the transferable points make them more useable than it looks on the surface, as I describe in this post.

Planning for the Future

With our trip to Europe around the corner, we’re doing our best to accumulate cash to reduce the cost of the trip which will be used as soon as it’s earned. After that, we will probably be looking to pick up credit cards with sign up bonuses that can pair well with the transferable points we already have. One possibility would be any of the Chase Avios cards (Air Lingus, British Airways or Iberia) because they could be topped off with Chase Ultimate Reward points. A lot of it will probably be determined by where we might want to go for spring break next year. Whatever we decide, because of the points that we have available we should be able to have a variety of options and that’s going to make that decision a lot of fun.

We now Have $10K in Points & Miles, What Does That Mean?

Posted on by David Cox

After really pushing every angle we could for the last 17 months, we now have accumulated 25,000 Citi Thank You points, 45,700 United miles, 80,000 Delta miles, 5,300 American Airlines miles, 58,300 Marriott Bonvoy points, 1,600 Hyatt Points, 274,900 Ultimate Reward points, 49,500 Wyndham points, 83,300 Capital One Venture Miles and $470 in Cash Back. By using the Points Guy valuations located at https://thepointsguy.com/guide/monthly-valuations/ that comes to a total value of $10,650. That sounds like a lot, but what exactly does that mean? It’s a bunch of points, but it’s spread over a ton of different programs. How useable are they, really? It turns out, that they are really useful because the real power are the transferable points that total up to around $7,500 worth of value between the Citi Thank You points, Capital One Venture miles, and the 274,900 Ultimate Reward points. Those points can either bulk up the points that you have in airline or hotel programs, or they can be transferred to a program you don’t even have points in, if there’s a great deal available. Let’s examine what these points could actually do.

United Airlines

Because Chase Ultimate Reward points are transferable to United Airlines (as long as you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, Chase Sapphire Reserve Card, or a Chase Ink Business Preferred Card) the 274,900 points can be transferred to United. That means that while we have a total of 45,700 United miles, it actually means we have the potential to have 320,600 United miles. With United Airlines saver rates to Europe running at 40K right now, that means the possibility of 4 round trip tickets to Europe.

American Airlines & Delta Airlines

American Airlines doesn’t have typical transfer partners. There was a brief moment when Citi Thank You points were transferable in late 2021, but there aren’t any current transfer partners. So the 5,300 miles are basically useless unless I get an AA credit card with a sign up bonus. However, Marriott Bonvoy will transfer to AA at 3:1, so 57,000 Bonvoy points could turn into 19,000 AA miles for a total of 24,300 AA miles, with which you could probably pretty easily get a domestic round trip ticket. With Delta we have 80,000 points, so that’s a usable amount, but we don’t have any points with Delta’s only major transfer partner, American Express. There is a 3:1 transfer opportunity from Marriott, so we could transfer 57,000 Marriott Bonvoy points to Delta for 19,000 Delta miles to make 99,000 Delta miles when added to the 80,000 we already have. Neither one of the Marriott transfers would be an ideal use of Bonvoy points, but it is available. That could pretty easily get us a few domestic round-trip tickets as 16K round-trip in Basic Economy is not too hard to find.

Marriott Bonvoy Points

Transferring to Marriott can be done at a 1:1 rate from Chase Ultimate Rewards to Marriott Bonvoy. This means that there is a potential of more than 330,000 Bonvoy points by combining our Ultimate Reward Points and Bonvoy points. Since I’ve been eyeballing a trip to the Canary Islands, I found this listing which is a 3 bedroom villa with a heated pool in the Canary Islands for 43K points per night. That’s 7 nights in this villa.

Hyatt

Hyatt is known for having the most valuable hotel reward points. Because of that, Hyatt has been a favorite way for people to use Ultimate Reward points for years, since they transfer at 1:1 to Hyatt. While I only have 1,600 Hyatt points, we are able to leverage as much as 276,500 Hyatt points by transferring our Ultimate Reward Points. Hyatt points are extremely valuable. For example, if you just need a clean and comfortable room, Hyatt has some pretty nice category 1 Hyatt Places that you can routinely book for 5,000 per night. If you were to use those points that way it’s a total of 55 nights at 5,000 per night. If you want to book all-inclusive resorts, they are classed from A-F. The standard night bookings for A is 15k points per night, B is 20k, C is 25K, D is 30K, E is 40K, and F is 50K. So we would be able to book 18 nights at a class A, 13 nights at a class B, 11 nights at a class C, 9 nights at a class D, 6 nights at a class E or 5 nights at a super-swanky class F. We stayed at the Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos (which recently jumped from a class B to a class D) and we thought it was fantastic. If we were to go back we could stay for 9 nights, although my liver probably couldn’t handle it.

Wyndham Rewards

Both Capital One Venture miles and Citi Thank You points transfer to Wyndham at a 1:1 ratio, so if you total all of those points up, I have the possibility of 157,800 Wyndham points. The only interesting use of Wyndham points, for me, is to use them for Vacasa rentals. The generally accepted rule on Vacasa is that the you can basically book any available Vacasa for 15,000 points per bedroom per night as long as the normal price of the rental isn’t more than $500 per bedroom per night. In other words, these points would be worth 10 nights at a one-bedroom Vacasa rental worth up to $500 per night, or 5 days at a two-bedroom Vacasa worth up to $1,000 per night or even 3 nights at a Vacasa rental worth $1,500 per night. It’s such a good deal that we recently purchased points for a rental in Nashville and it saved us around $1000 over three nights.

Flying Blue

Ok, I have exactly 0 Flying Blue miles. Flying Blue is the rewards currency of Air France, KLM, and 4 smaller airlines. Just because I don’t have Flying Blue miles doesn’t mean that I can’t redeem them for flights, though. Flying Blue is great because they have great transfer partners and occasionally have ridiculous deals. They are 1:1 transfer partners with Chase, Capital One, American Express, Citi and Bilt. They are also 3:1 partners with Marriott Bonvoy. So if I do the math on the Capital One, Citi, Chase and Marriott Bonvoy Points, I have access to over 375,000 Flying Blue miles. On top of that, sometimes they have some awesome transatlantic flight rates. Here is an example I put together from Chicago to Paris. It’s round trip in Economy, 30K miles and less than $200 in taxes and fees. I could literally book this 12 times with the available points.

Virgin

Ok, this one, honestly, I don’t even believe this exists. Bear with me on this, again I have precisely 0 Virgin miles. Virgin has a ton of great transfer partners, similar to Flying Blue. They have Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi Thank You points, Capital One and Amex all at 1:1 as well as Marriott Bonvoy at 3:1. In this case, it would be similar to Flying Blue with us able to covert our points to 375,000 Virgin miles, however, they also right now are offering a 30% transfer bonus from Chase, as described in this post from One Mile at a Time. With the transfer bonus, we would have access to 464,500 Virgin miles if we did complete transfers from Citi, Chase, Capital One and Marriott. Here is the deal from Virgin that would be the most intriguing to me – Virgin cruises occasionally runs sales on cruises where you can get a one week cruise for 2 people for 80,000 points. The latest special, as described by Upgraded Points, has 4 different 7 day itineraries for Mediterranean cruises to choose from. With the available points, we could cruise for 5 weeks and have points to spare. That’s just silly.

The importance of Flexibility

Obviously, a lot of these examples are ridiculous. We’re not going to stay 55 nights in a Hyatt Place, fly to Paris 12 times or cruise for 5 weeks, but they are meant to illustrate a point. If you stay on top of deals and know who you can transfer points to, you can really stretch out your points. If you can also be flexible with dates and locations, you can stretch it out even more. Keep in mind though, a typical, non-saver one way fare across the Atlantic Ocean is 70K United miles, not 40K, and business class typically runs 155K so these miles can disappear quickly if you’re not shopping around. If you try pricing out a Saturday to Saturday trip to Cancun during spring break on points to stay at an all-inclusive resort, that will probably be an ungodly amount of points, if you can even book on points at all. However, flying to Europe during spring break is off-peak and can be extremely cheap by comparison. Just like with cash, your points can go a lot farther if you are a diligent shopper.

Cash

I hope this never happens, but there is always the possibility that at some point I won’t want to travel, or can’t travel for some reason. In which case, these points are useless, correct? Well, not exactly. The credit card points do have a cash value, not the airline and hotel points, but the credit card points. The Chase Ultimate Reward points are worth 1 cent each, the Citi Thank You points are worth 1 cent each and the Capital One miles we have are worth half a cent each, when redeemed for cash. That would mean all of those transferable points have a current cash value of over $3,400. Which is nice, but probably not how I want to use the points.

What do we do now?

It’s almost strange to think about, but I just consider this to be a good base of points. We finally have enough points to utilize multiple programs (this post doesn’t even scratch the surface of great transfer partners, I didn’t even mention one of my favorites, Turkish Airlines). Our strategy moving forward will probably include a decent amount of cash back cards to fill in those gaps that points can’t, like Airbnb and taxes and fees on flights. It will also probably mean getting cards that are running elevated sign up bonuses. Either way, the next vacation we book should be easier for us to get a really good deal because of the flexibility we have built with this cache of points and miles.

Back Unturned Brewing Co- San Antonio, Texas

Posted on by David Cox

I walked into Back Unturned Brewing company in the early evening having not had a proper meal all day. The place was a little dark and industrial. The color scheme is one of a lot of black, deep reds, stainless steel and grey, There was a lot of original art on the walls and the lighting was dim. Oh, this place is edgy, trendy and I most definitely am not. I’m middle-aged, milquetoast, boring, you know, the kind of person that uses the word “milquetoast.” But I needed food and I wanted a beer, so I was gonna stay, even if I wasn’t cool enough to be there.

Dark as Helles Lager – oxymoronic name, delicious beer.

I sat down at the bar and ordered a Dark as Helles Lager which they had listed as a schwarzbier. I took a sip of this an immediately said to the bartender “Are you sure this is a schwarzbier?” I didn’t mean that as a criticism, it was absolutely delicious but it was rich, malty and had lots of roasted flavor. Frankly, it was too flavorful to be a schwarzbier because they tend to be run a little more muted. Honestly though, I don’t care how they classified this beer, it was damned delicious.

Red subway tile and LED lights make for a sharp looking tap station.

I took a look at the menu and decided on a margarita pizza. I order margarita pizza somewhat regularly, especially when I know I’m going to be eating out a lot. They usually satisfy my hunger but since they’re vegetarian, they tend to not weigh me down the same way a sausage pizza would. One problem with ordering them at restaurants is that margarita pizzas are made a lot of times by people who don’t cook vegetarian very often and forget that you need to season vegetarian dishes more aggressively, because there isn’t any meat to do the seasoning for you. This was not a problem at Back Unturned, however. This pizza came out with a perfect flatbread crust, and it was properly seasoned. The chef had laid each pizza piece with a tomato slice and a leaf of basil and most importantly he put enough salt on it to balance the tomato. It was so good. It was definitely the best margarita pizza I’ve had in a long time.

Mmm margarita pizza – and look at that char, perfect!

I also had their Wrath of Marz(en). Which was a very well done märzen style beer. The bartender was extremely friendly and was willing to chat a little in between pouring drinks, which I appreciate when I’m sitting at the bar by myself. Overall, it was a great experience and I would definitely return, even if I’m not really cool enough to be there.

Pro tip: If you walk into a place with a sketch of Anthony Bourdain on the wall, order food.

For more information on Back Unturned Brewing Co, visit their website at https://www.backunturned.com/beer.

Roadmap Brewing Co – San Antonio Texas

Posted on by David Cox

I was in San Antonio for a work conference and between the flight, checking into the hotel, and standing in an insufferably long line to check in and get a lanyard for the conference, I was a touch cranky. Alas, there is generally a solution for my crankiness, beer, so I wandered over to the closest brewery I could find – Roadmap Brewing Company. It’s a little less than a mile walk from the main Riverwalk touristy area, but definitely worth the walk.

Looks like a fairly inaccurate map of Texas highways and interstates. Still a nice touch, though.

Roadmap plays up the classic road trip theme. For a microbrewery, it is a good size with a decent amount of seating. It has a industrial feel, with concrete floors and high top tables that are made of wood and black pipe. The stainless steel brewing equipment is right out in the seating area and not in the back room, which I like, but might make for some overpowering smells on brew day. The music was playing at a comfortable volume, mostly a combination of pop punk and rock. I believe there was a food truck parked outside, but I didn’t pay any attention to that, I just wanted a glass of ale.

I love this logo!

I ordered a Craven Cottage, which is a classic amber English Pub ale. It was a really solid and tasty version of the style. It’s not usually my go to style of beer, but it’s also a fairly uncommon style for American craft breweries, so of course I was going to try it. It was well-balanced with toasty biscuit and caramel notes, very drinkable. Craven Cottage is definitely the kind of beer that you could have a few. I also had the Minivan Dad, which is a double IPA at 7.9% ABV. I thought it was another well done beer, which was malty enough to hold up to the fairly aggressive hopping. I thought they did a pretty good job of balance on this one, and I definitely enjoyed it.

Sister breweries posted on the wall. The road signs look is a nice touch.

Hey Gen-Z, Did You Know?

Roadmaps were mapping systems, like Google Maps or Apple Maps, only they were printed on paper. Some of these were for cities or states and would be on large (approximately 3′ x 3′) paper that would be folded up so that it could fit into a glove box. Others would in the form of a road atlas, where a collection of roadmaps would be bound with a spiral binder. You can still find road atlases either shoved under Grandpa’s truck seat or between his WWII books and his Tom Clancy novels in his “study.” If you are lucky enough to find one, it is usually marked up with highlighters and stained with tears. These roadmaps were normally paired with the passenger in the shotgun seat that would relay instructions to the driver. Together this made up the Passenger Seat Navigation system.

Differences between Phone Navigation (PN) systems and Passenger Seat Navigation (PSN) systems:

  • While PN systems warn the driver 10 miles before an interstate highway exit, PSN systems let the driver know about their exit 300 feet before the exit, causing the driver to cut off 2 lanes of traffic.
  • PN systems can anticipate road construction and route drivers around traffic issues while PSN systems typically just scream “I told you that you should have taken [other route] but noooo you never listen to me.”
  • PN systems are typically polite, while PSN systems refer to the driver as “dickhole”
  • Unlike PSN systems, PN systems require no human interaction and frees passengers up to nap and eat Munchies.
  • PN systems give minute by minute updates on expected arrival times, while PSN systems occasionally blurt out “Ugh, I’m gonna be dead by the time we get there.”
They ordered the menu from low to high ABV, I’m detecting a little OCD.

Overall, I really liked Roadmap Brewing Company. The vibe was cool and it definitely seemed like a great place to relax. They had a really nice selection of beer on tap, not only because they had 16 taps, but they also hit quite a few beer styles on the menu. It looked like, based on the collection of cans they had on top of one of their coolers, that they probably rotate out their beers fairly frequently, which should keep their regulars coming back. If I lived in San Antonio, this would definitely be a regular customer at this brewery.

If you would like more information on Roadmap Brewing Company, why not visit their website at https://www.roadmapbrewing.com/?

Points Check April 2023

Posted on by David Cox

Whew, what a hell of a month! It feels like we were absolutely raking in points. The total value of our points rose by around $3,400. We actually accumulated 3 bonuses this month. Jenn finally finished off her spending on her Chase Ink Cash Card and received her 90,000 Ultimate Rewards point bonus and I finished off my Bank of the West cash back card for a $200 cash bonus. We also pulled off a rare wham-bam-thank-you-Capital-One by having Jenn sign up for the Capital One Venture Card to pay our taxes, and earned a 75,000 point bonus by paying for our taxes, the credit card fees and the Turbotax software.

A Couple of Travel Redemptions

I did have a couple of small redemptions for our trip to Europe. The only thing missing from our travel itinerary was train tickets from Venice to Rome. I was able to book those through Italotreno and wipe those charges out with the cash back from my Bank of the West bonus. I also used cash back to book a ghost tour in Venice, which sounds fun. We’ve done a couple in New Orleans and they always turn out to be a fun combination of history and spooky stories and as a bonus, they freak my daughter out. With just a couple months before our trip to Europe, I’m really trying to pre-book some tours before we leave so that we have some structure built into the trip. I’m a little afraid that with us visiting 6 cities in 14 days that we could easily become overwhelmed if we don’t have that structure pre-built into the trip. We normally don’t travel like this so being prepared is a little foreign to me. We also booked a Vacasa in Nashville for the fall by buying and using Wyndham points which turned out to be an insanely good deal.

Capital One Venture Card

The Capital One Venture Card is a great all around travel card. It comes with a $95 annual fee and has some of the same benefits that a lot of $100-ish travel cards come with such as TSA precheck credit, travel insurance, and no foreign transaction fees. It also does have a couple of one-time lounge passes that you might be able to use. However, in my opinion, the best thing about this card is that it allows you to earn a decent amount of points very simply. It’s 2x everything. That’s it, 2x on everything. In addition, the Points Guy values these points at 1.85 cents per piece (only if you transfer the points, of course) which means that you’re really getting a return of 3.7% on everything you buy with this card. They have 18 transfer partners which allow you to really get the most of these points. In our case, I was really looking to boost our ability to get Turkish Miles and Smiles points because they have a ridiculous deal where you can book United Airlines Saver fares for 15,000 miles round trip for all US domestic flights and 20,000 miles to fly round trip to Mexico. There are a crazy number of ways to get great value for Turkish Miles as God Save the Points describes.

Honestly, if I knew someone who wanted to get into miles and points but didn’t want to sign up for credit cards all the time, I would tell that person to just get the Capital One Venture Card and learn how to book flights using Turkish Miles and Smiles. I mean, every $7,500 spent on the card is equal to a domestic round trip ticket, every $10,000 spent is a round trip ticket to Mexico. It honestly doesn’t get much easier in the miles and points world than that. That being said, booking flights with Turkish is a pain, but it’s worth it.

Anyway, On to the Points Check!

Jenn spent over $300 on her Chase Ink Unlimited and earned 500 Ultimate Reward Points. She also spent $3,100 on her Chase Ink Cash card and earned 5,100 points plus the 90,000 point sign up bonus. I spent $1,100 on my US Bank Altitude Connect card and earned $27 in cash back. Jenn spent $1,400 on her Wyndham Business Earner Card and earned 2,000 points. I also spent a little less than $300 on my Citi Premier Card and earned over 500 Citi Thank You Points. We also paid our taxes with Jenn’s new Capital One Venture Card and with all of the fees it was around $4,200 and with the points earned and the 75,000 point bonus we earned a total of 83,300 Venture Miles. In addition to all of that I spent a little over $200 on my Bank of the West Cash Back Card earning over $2 and the $200 bonus which I quickly redeemed on train tickets in Italy and a ghost tour in Venice.

All of this left us with a total of 24,500 Citi Thank You Points, 40,700 United Miles, 51,300 Marriott Bonvoy Points, 1,600 Hyatt Points, 300 Delta Miles, 272,200 Ultimate Reward Points, and 83,300 Capital One Venture Miles as well as around $40 in Cash Back. Using The Points Guy’s points valuations, these points are worth just shy of $8,400 which is much higher than our previous high of $5,100 just before we redeemed a bunch of miles to book our trip to Europe.

We profited $1,350 from paying our taxes!

Posted on by David Cox

Ever since I started into the Miles and Points game, I had heard people talking about how they paid their taxes with a credit card. My first reaction was that doing that is idiotic, after all there are always fees for charging your taxes. Once the fees are charged, the value of any points that you earned are going to be wiped out, right? That’s true-ish (I think I could find examples where it would still be profitable) but if you figure in sign up bonuses, all of a sudden it gets a lot more lucrative.

I have a full-time job and pay into taxes like any normal paycheck employee, but Jenn owns a business as an owner/operator. We’ve debated for years about whether she should pay quarterly taxes or just wait until the end of the year to pay in one lump sum. The lump sum thing always wins, because frankly, it’s just easier. We knew that we were going to have to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,000 dollars in additional taxes to cover what she hasn’t paid in, so we thought what better way to pick up some points than with a nice credit card bonus?

Some people use this as an opportunity to go after a massive signup bonus on a card that has a large spend to meet the bonus and then use the big tax payment to make that spend a little more reasonable. The typical example of this is the American Express Business Platinum Card where they might offer 150,000 points after you spend $15,000 in 3 months. It might not be reasonable for you to spend that much in 3 months, but if you pay your taxes on it, maybe the spend is reasonable. This is something we might think about in the future, but it wasn’t worth it for us this time.

After discovering Turkish Miles and Smiles last year and realizing just how great a deal it was for booking United Airlines flights domestically and to Mexico (15,000 points round trip domestic in economy, 20,000 points round trip to Mexico in economy) we knew we at least wanted some points we could transfer to Turkish. The Points Guy has a great article about how this program can be a tremendous deal. We had been amassing a lot of Chase Ultimate Reward points, but they aren’t transferable to Turkish. Citi Thank You points and Capital One Miles are, however. I already had a Citi Premier Card so we decided to go with the Capital One Venture Rewards Card.

The Capital One Venture Rewards Card is great for it’s simplicity, its 2x points on everything. The great thing about that for people who have multiple credit cards is that its usually pretty easy to find a credit card that will give you 3x, 4x, or even 5x on things like travel, groceries, gas or dining out but so many categories are always 1x that this is a great everything else card. Like, if instance, paying your taxes. This card was also offering a 75,000 point signup bonus, which is a very generous offer. There is a $95 annual fee for the card and the minimum spend for the bonus was $4,000 in 3 months.

Jenn signed up for the offer and was approved. Our taxes did indeed come out to around $4,000 owed, and with the amount that we spent on Turbotax it got us to a total of $4,030. The fee for using a credit card turned out to be $95 which was a little less than 2.4 percent, I’ve heard that you can get a fee about a half percent lower than that, but I guess we didn’t shop around enough. If you add in the $95 annual fee that we paid to get the points our fees for doing this was around $190 dollars. The end result of all of this was that we earned the 75,000 sign up bonus and with the 2x on the spend, it brought our total to 83,254 Venture Miles.

The cash value of these points are 1 cent per point, so if you just take the cash it would be $832 minus the $190 in fees for a quick profit of $642. I prefer points over the cash, because I like to travel. The points guy values these points at 1.85 cents per point or a total of $1,540 minus the fees gets me a profit of $1,350. Now in all honestly, the accurate way of looking at this is that the points acquired are worth approximately 4 off-peak flights to Mexico or 5 off-peak domestic flights. And in the words of my lovely wife “I ain’t mad about it.”

For a more in-depth article about the benefits of paying taxes with credit cards, check out this article from Frequent Miler.

St. Mary’s Glacier

Posted on by David Cox

Is there anything more breathtaking than a mountain lake? There is something indescribably beautiful about still clear waters surrounded by mountain peaks. Add in some melting snowpack nearby, I mean wow, what can be more gorgeous than that? St Mary’s Glacier is all of those things and if you can, this is a must-do hike.

The glacier is on the backside of the lake from the trail.

We had already done a hike at Maxwell Peak that morning and decided to drive out to Idaho Springs and do St Mary’s Glacier. It’s a fairly short hike, about a mile and a half to the lake and back with an elevation change of about 750 feet. That seemed pretty doable on a shortened schedule.

Strava Stats for this hike

The drive out there was a little scary for us Iowa folks. There was a lot of switchbacks and it seemed like one wrong turn could mean plummeting to our deaths. The kids were enjoying the scenery but I was white knuckled on the steering wheel and Jenn was definitely a nervous passenger. The truck didn’t seem to enjoy the drive either. I think the combination of the elevation and the slope was pretty hard on my truck because it smelled like antifreeze when we parked. There is a parking lot near the trailhead, which was sketchy at best, with potholes that you could lose a subcompact car in. I would definitely take into consideration what kind of car you were driving to get to the trailhead. The drive up there will test your drivetrain, the parking lot will test your suspension, and the drive back will test your brakes, so make sure you feel good about what you’re driving.

The rocky path up to the lake

There is a five dollar fee to park in the lot, we paid that and began the trek up the path to the lake. This is definitely a popular hike so there were a lot of people doing this hike with us. That’s usually not great for Sadie who is great with people, but not great with other dogs. The trail is wide, however, which allowed me to steer her away from those dogs.

St Mary’s Lake

The path itself is steep and rocky. You should probably be in decent shape to hike this. This is over 10,000 feet, so the air is fairly thin and the slope is steep enough to get most hikers breathing heavy. There are large rocks everywhere which essentially meant that there was a constant danger of an ankle twist or a slip and fall, so slow and steady is the way to go.

You can continue to climb up the mountain after arriving at the lake, we did not.

After a little over a half mile, the rocks begin to be more sparse and the grade becomes less steep. The peak and the glacier suddenly come in to view and then finally the lake itself. There are many places in this world where you see something so beautiful that you forget to breathe for a second. This is one of those spots. I had seen pictures, but they just don’t do it justice.

This cliff face is a popular place to cliff dive

There was a lot of activity going on around the lake. On the far side of the lake, there were some skiers who were skiing down the glacier, then taking their skis off and hiking back up to the top of the glacier. There were some climbers attempting to get to the top of the peak. There was also a group of a couple dozen young people who were cliff diving into the lake on the back side of the lake. I waded into the lake a little and as I imagined, it was pretty cold, so those divers were definitely brave.

Skiers on a glacier in July
Cliff Jumping into the lake

We had a great time hanging around the lake and especially watching those crazy divers, but in typical Colorado fashion the sky started to darken and Sadie was becoming real nervous. It was time to leave, like 15 minutes ago. We got halfway down the trail and it started to downpour. It was a thunderstorm and Sadie was not a happy puppy. By the time we got back to the car, we were all soaked and freezing and Sadie hasn’t talked to us since.

Everyone is in good spirits, but that dark cloud is ominous.

Running the Cabo San Lucas Marina

Posted on by David Cox

The run around the marina in Cabo San Lucas is about a 5 kilometers trip if you do a full loop (up and back). It’s dead flat (ignore the elevation change on this Strava recording, my Garmin was having major problems with elevation). It’s also a great way to get a quick sense of what is going on around the major tourist area in Cabo San Lucas.

There are some huge private boats in the marina.

Typically, the marina isn’t very relaxing to walk through because there are tons of people trying to sell you boat tours. However, I found that no one bothers you when your jogging there, which is good to know if you just want to look around without having to say “No, Gracias” every 30 seconds.

The sea lions like to hang out in the marina

We were staying in an Airbnb above the Puerto Paraiso shopping mall on the north end of the marina. I started counterclockwise around the marina so the first part I ran through was past the mall and restaurant area. As I began to turn south, there is an absolutely huge construction area where they were tearing down what looked to be a very large hotel or condo complex. Hopefully someone will build something cool there.

Sea lion enjoying himself

Once I was past the construction area there were some shops and restaurants. This area is a less dense commercial area which meant my attention was being grabbed more by the sea lions diving for fish. There are quite a few sea lions that hang out in the marina, but I only saw them on the west side for some reason. Pretty quickly I reached the end of the marina and had to turn around because the marina ends, and so I had to turn back and run this area in reverse.

Once I did a full backtrack of west side of the marina, I was now running toward Medano Beach on the east side of the marina. This side is pretty much packed with bars, restaurants and shops. It makes it a fun part to hang out but if you start your run too late in the day, like I did, you’ll find yourself dodging a lot of people.

There are boats everywhere

Once you reach the end of the marina, you arrive at Medano Beach. There is a turnaround with a tower which sits atop a rocky breakwater. Looking down the beach from there is a series of nightclubs that get pretty busy during the height of beach time and of course, at night.

The tower at the pier on Medano Beach

I headed back to the Airbnb and ran a little extra so I could get to 4 miles. Running around the marina is very enjoyable, but I would suggest trying to get up fairly early for it. The longer you wait, the hotter and more congested the walkways get. There is a ton to look at between the boats, the sea lions and the shops and restaurants. It’s hard not to jog this area without finding something that you’ll want to wander over and check out (after a shower, obviously).

My Garmin is having an issue with elevation, it should read 0 ft. I doubled back a bit to get an extra mile.

Should we keep Vacasa a secret?

Posted on by David Cox

** On November 30, 2025, vacasa will end ITS partnership with Wyndham and this will no longer be available.**

Jenn booked 3 days in a Vacasa in Nashville for September this week and it’s a crazy good deal. I mean, it’s the kind of deal that you’re afraid if you start talking about it, the company might start to realize how much money they’re losing on it and shut it down. I’d like to think we could keep this quiet but I think this cat is getting out of the bag about this so you might as well get it while it’s still available.

What’s Vacasa?

Like Airbnb, VRBO and Marriott Homes and Villas, Vacasa is a short term vacation rental booking company. They team up with individual owners to list properties for rent and they take a portion of that rent payment for processing, advertising and managing the booking process. Like Marriott Homes and Villas, Vacasas are bookable with points, in this case Wyndham points. Unlike Marriott Homes and Villas, Vacasas have a set point chart which allows you to get ridiculously good value for those points if you choose well.

Vacasa’s Point Chart

The Vacasa point chart is extremely simple. Vacasa charges 15,000 Wyndham points per night, per bedroom. A 1-bedroom Vacasa is 15,000 per night, 2-bedroom is 30,000 points, etc. People have reported that the cash rate ceiling for a 1-bedroom is $500, meaning that if you attempt to book a 1-bedroom that would rent for $550 per night, the redemption will not go through. I don’t know what the cash rate ceiling is for it a 2-bedroom, I assume its higher, though. Wyndham points are generally regarded as being worth 1.1 cents per point, but a 15,000 point rental worth near $500 per night is over 3 cents a point. That’s a outstanding redemption for Wyndham points. (Update – The maximum redemption as of October 2023 is now $350 per bedroom per night, down from $500)

Nashville is crazy expensive!

Blame it on the bachelorette parties, but Nashville hotel prices are out of control. We saw most hotel rooms (not suites, just rooms) going for $350-$500 per night. We planned to use some hotel points or maybe a certificate or two to book a hotel in Nashville, but daaammmmnnnn, it’s overpriced. We literally couldn’t stomach what a redemption would cost near the downtown area. But Vacasa, we’ll, that’s a different story.

Cash Value of Vacasas in Nashville

Im not saying that the Vacasas in Nashville weren’t expensive, they absolutely were, but because of how the chart works, if we want to use points, a 1-bedroom rental for 3 nights is just 45,000 points, it doesn’t matter which one. The only caveat was that we needed to keep the cash rate for that 3 night rental under $1,500. Jenn found one she liked and we wanted to book it, but we didn’t have the points yet, now what?

Buying Wyndham points

Typically, you can buy Wyndham points for 1.3 cents per point and you can buy up to 60,000 points per year. Wyndham was running a special allowing people to buy up to 120,000 points as well as get a 40% bonus. As tempting as it would be to max that out and buy everything I could to get a whopping 168,000 points, we resisted the urge and bought the 29,000 points with 11,600 bonus points for $377. That gave us the 40,500 points we needed to book 3 nights in the Vacasa. I realize that yes, that’s less than 15,000 per night, and that’s because with Jenn’s Wyndham Business Earner card, she gets a 15% discount, so it’s an even better deal!

Bed 1
Bed 2

So here’s another sneaky thing about the price of these Vacasas – just because it’s a 1-bedroom doesn’t mean it’s one bed. We found this rental with 2 beds because one of the bedrooms can’t qualify as a bedroom. Maybe it’s not big enough, maybe it doesn’t have egress, I don’t know, but it’s basically an unqualified bedroom. That means, I’m basically getting a second bedroom for the price of a one bedroom. Actually, this is extremely common in the vacation rental industry because they want to say they sleep 4 or 6, so they cram in beds to try to make it more appealing to families. This normally raises their prices but with the Vacasa/Wyndham reward chart, it counts as a 1-bedroom. That’s great for me, I’m getting a second bedroom for free!

The kitchen is nice and modern, definitely good enough for a weekend.

What would this have cost, normally?

This was going to be more than $1,350 for 3 nights.

So here is what this rental would have cost normally, had we not paid with points. Keep in mind, we didn’t actually have the points, we had to buy them. In other words, we paid $377 for a vacation rental that was posted for $1,357. Essentially, we paid 28% of the listed price just by going through the steps to buy the points, then call Vacasa about what we wanted to book (points redemptions are can be done through email or phone call with them). That was it, huge discount, nice vacation rental. I can’t wait to stay in downtown Nashville, but knowing we didn’t spend a fortune makes it even better. Oh yeah, and all those taxes and cleaning fees, they are included in the redemption, which is nuts, because the taxes and fees section alone was $526!

I’m honestly not sure how or why Vacasa is doing this. It’s possible they know that they will take a loss, but maybe they’re just happy to get their name out there, since compared to Airbnb and VRBO they’re pretty small. My guess is that eventually, they will change the point chart to allow redemptions up to, say $300 per night for 15,000 points then maybe 30,000 points up to $500. This just seems unsustainable to me and I suspect a change is inevitable. That being said, there’s no harm in taking advantage of it now, but maybe we can just keep it between us, right?