Extreme Travelers: Mileage Runs

So I have found a few articles lately about some pretty crazy things people are doing in the name of frequent flier miles. So I am starting an Extreme Traveler series. We're starting with Howie Rappaport who does 2-3  mileage runs a year to keep his elite status with his preferred airline. Read the article here. What is a mileage run you ask? People taking CRAZY long trips on airplanes just to keep your elite status. Rappaport would be flying from New York to Dallas, Dallas to LA, and LA to Maui where he would have a 90 minute layover and then fly right back. GOOD GOD MAN, at least stay one night in paradise while you're there! And he does this sort of thing all the time!

Does it pay off? It depends on how you look at it I suppose, he travels for work also so the elite status is helpful for him when checking in and boarding the plane. He and his wife also like to travel all over the world and like to fly first class, in the new year they will be taking first class trips to Thailand (jealous), Poland and Bali – only paying the small fees you have to pay when booking with points.

Just to give you an idea I was looking into seeing how many points we would need to take our trip to Thailand in 2014 and to fly First/Business class there and back would be about 620,000 points and about $160 in taxes and fees. HOLY MOLY!!! That’s a lot of points! So now we are doing everything we can to get bonus points. That includes enrolling in the mileage shopping and dining programs and taking advantage of any bonus offers they are promoting. Side note, if you were looking to purchase without using your miles it would be $2,600 for economy and $15,700 for First/Business class.

I have never had elite status so I don’t know how the other half lives (if you are or have been and elite member chime in down in the comments). Currently I am just over 50% to getting my elite status but I don’t think I'll be traveling in the next 6 months and I'm sure some of those "status points" will be expired by then…boo. :(

Happy New Year!

Happy Travels!

MIA

I am so sorry for being a little MIA lately! After my last post we headed out the door to my parents for Christmas and I didn't blog then because I didn't have any of my stuff (computer, pictures, etc.). But now I am back and I'll tell you what we have been up to.

In early November we replaced the carpet in our little house, while doing that we pulled up all the baseboards too (they were ugly and dirty!). So once the new carpet was put in we needed the help for my handy little brother to install all the new baseboards for the WHOLE house! Look at the before and after, I took this picture before the shoe molding was installed but it already looks AMAZING!!! This is how we are using our 11 days off around the holidays...stay-cation???

So...that is what we have been up to and why I haven't been on the blog in a while. We are also redoing the master closet and I got a Silhouette for my birthday so I am excited to start using that and creating more DIY around the house! 

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! These are my girls taken at my parent house.

Lola

Coco

Day 9: Swamp Trail & Day 10: Mainland Bound

Pu'u o Kila Lookout

Today we decided to take another stab at the hiking thing and venture on an 8 mile (possibly 10 if a gate was closed) hike. Well…the gate was OPEN!!! YAY!!! We started at the Pu'u o Kila Lookout (which is an easy walk to see the view to your left <---) and trekked 2 miles on the Pihea Trail until it crossed with Alakai Swamp Trail. The swamp trail was another 2 miles until we reached the Kilohana Lookout. WOW and AMAZING are the only things I can say to describe the views that I saw. We were lucky, it was a clear day and we were able to see Hanalei Bay from the lookout. We stopped to take pictures and have lunch and then we turned right back around for the 4 miles back to the car.

Pihea Trail

Swamp Trail

Kilohana Lookout

This hike was pretty treacherous, lots of slippery clay and 75 degree inclines to climb. The swamp did have boards for you walk on so that was nice and made it easier. Considering how slippery it was I only sort of slipped (I caught myself) and my husband slipped big time but did not fall. :P So the only thing muddy was our shoes! After that we passed JoJo's Shave Ice on the way back to the hotel and got some goooood shave ice! I think the best on the whole island! The building was a little sketchy but it was totally fine.

We stopped to get the next day's breakfast from Koloa Mills Ice Cream & Coffee and then back to the Sheraton to start packing up.

Day 10: Mainland Bound

We slept in (FINALLY) and then drove to the post office to ship home some of our muddy hiking equipment and presents we had bought for friends and family. After that we just chilled and took in the beach one last time before checking out late and heading to the airport around 2pm…where we waited again until our flight at 5:30pm. We got to Honolulu around 6:15pm and waited in the United Lounge (and snacked on the free food) until our flight…then we were on our way back home!

I hope you enjoyed our travels and pictures of Kauai! Did you miss a day? See the links below:

Day 1: The Garden Isle
Day 2: The Hike that almost Killed Me
Day 3: Journey to the North Shore
Day 4: The Sunny South
Day 5: Cruisin' the Coconut Coast

Day 6: Na Pali Snorkel

Day 7: Secret Gardens

Day 8: Where the Road Ends

Aloha and Mahalo Kauai, it was fun!

Day 8: Where the Road Ends

Hanalei Valley

Today we headed back up to the north shore to check out Tunnels and Ke'e beach and the wet and dry caves along the road. We drove to the end of the road and walked along Ke'e and saw the amazing cliffs of the Na Pali coast. Since we were so beat from our very first hike we decided not to hike the 2 miles in (and 2 miles out) to Hanakapiai Beach. It was also winter the water was pretty rough and there were signs posted everywhere of rough shore break and strong currents…boo! For lunch we went back to Hanalei and ate at Hanalei Pizza! That place is worth a stop! The pizza was great and the prices were very wallet friendly! For 2 slices and 2 sodas it was $11.50! By far the cheapest meal we had the whole trip (and the slices were pretty big)! 

Ke'e Beach

Wet Cave

After the drive back to Poipu we went snorkeling one last time on Poipu Beach…bitter sweet *sigh*

Day 1: The Garden Isle
Day 2: The Hike that almost Killed Me
Day 3: Journey to the North Shore
Day 4: The Sunny South
Day 5: Cruisin' the Coconut Coast

Day 6: Na Pali Snorkel

Day 7: Secret Gardens

Mahalo!

~Happy Holidays~

Before finishing up my posts about Kauai, Hawaii I wanted to share some holiday cheer with everyone. There are some cupcakes I made for my holiday party at work. I love to bake and decorate but I don't have the time to do it (because I make everything from scratch) and I don't need all those calories hanging around the house either! Hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!

Happy Holidays!

  

Day 7: Secret Gardens

{Jurassic Park trees}

This morning we headed to the McBride & Allerton Garden tour, part of the National Tropical Botanical Gardens. This was not something that I initially wanted to do because I thought $45 to tour some garden sounded ridiculous. Well as it turns out it was only $35 per person and well worth the price. I was amazed by everything I saw. Our tour guide was Frank and he did a lovely job telling us about the gardens and you could really tell he was passionate about his job.

{this sprout of bamboo was 3 days old and 6.5' ft tall!}

The McBride garden serves as a research and conservation garden where they do amazing work with toxins in common plants to help cancer research. You can tour this garden only for a smaller fee. But take the guided tour of both, it's worth it.

{from Whoville?}

The Allerton garden is named after Robert Allerton who purchased part of Queen Emma of Hawaii's estate on the southern shore of Kauai. Allerton had a passion for landscape architecture, sculpture and design. Along with is life companion, John, whom he legally adopted, they began designing individual "rooms" for the 80 acre garden. You might recognize some of these rooms since they are featured in the opening scene of Gilligan's Island, scenes from Pirates of the Caribbean 4 and of course Jurassic Park. The famous trees you see above are only 63 years old! If they were growing in the natural habitat to be that big they would be 300 years old! They are Moreton Bay Fig trees.

After the gardens we headed to Lihue to enjoy our helicopter ride. We chose to ride with Safari helicopters since their prices were low and I didn’t see any bad things about them (although their DVD is not worth buying). Kauai was beautiful from above! The morning started out kind of cloudy but the skies cleared before we took off. Unless you are an avid/hardcore hiker you wouldn’t be able to see most of Kauai unless you see it from above. And we were almost able to see the top of Mt. Wai'ale'ale (Wai'ale'ale gets an average of 400+ inches of rain a year!).

After our helicopter flight we headed back to the hotel for a couples cabana massage. HOLY MOLY was that wonderful! Neither one of us had ever had a massage before so that plus the sound of the waves crashing on the beach…it was just so relaxing!

Day 1: The Garden Isle
Day 2: The Hike that almost Killed Me
Day 3: Journey to the North Shore
Day 4: The Sunny South
Day 5: Cruisin' the Coconut Coast
Day 6: Na Pali Snorkel

Mahalo!

Day 6: Na Pali Snorkel

Day 1: The Garden Isle
Day 2: The Hike that almost Killed Me
Day 3: Journey to the North Shore
Day 4: The Sunny South
Day 5: Cruisin' the Coconut Coast

Today was another early morning; we headed to Port Allen to join Captain Andy and his crew on another tour of the Na Pali coast and some snorkeling. Check in was at 7:15am and when we loaded the catamaran they had some breakfast pastries waiting for us while they went over their safety briefing. Now I knew that we would most likely not be able to snorkel on the Na Pali coast since it was winter and the northern parts of the islands usually have high surf during the winter months. But they took us to spot in the south that was famous for sea turtles so there was no complaints. 

After the snorkel stop we were on our way to see the cliffs in the morning sun. Along the way we were joined by some spinner dolphins … WOW! They were having some fun with us! There must have been about 100 of them and they were jumping out of the water like Mexican jumping beans! After that we spotted a humpback whale but all we were able to see was him blowing his blowhole, still pretty cool! The water was pretty rough, 5-7 foot swells the captain said and there was about 4 people on our trip that needed the "aloha" bag (as they call it…barf bag).

The rest of the day we just relaxed and enjoyed the sun and the water.

Mahalo!