Frequent Miler on the Air - A 5-year, 50-state road trip: the Stephen Pepper episode

Episode Date: January 25, 2020

When the cat's away the mice will play: with Greg on vacation this week, hear Nick and Frequent Miler contributor Stephen Pepper discuss: -Reader feedback: why we re-publish some old posts -What's it like to take a 5-year road trip? -A couple of years in, what would Stephen change? -What has surprised him the most about this journey? -Would Stephen recommend this lifestyle for others? All that and more in this week's episode.

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the Air. I'm your host this week, Nick Reyes, senior author at thefrequentmiler.com. Now, regular listeners will note a different voice here at the beginning this week, because you are used to hearing Greg, the Frequent Miler, kick off our podcast. This week, he is on vacation, and so we all know that when the cat's away, the mice will play. So this week, I've got a special guest here with me, our very own Steven Pepper, who writes quick deals for us a couple of days a week, and also writes our last chance deals posts on Sunday. Steven's got a really interesting story because he's in the midst of a five year 50 state road trip. So this week, we're going to talk all about his road trip, the things that have surprised him, the things he's enjoyed the most, whether or not he recommends

this as a lifestyle choice for someone else, whether or not he ever intends to settle down now that he's a couple of years into a five-year trip around the United States. And so we'll discuss all of the various challenges and experiences that he's had with that so far, ask him a bunch of questions, and learn more about that. Now, we always start out Frequent Miler on the Air with a little bit of reader feedback. Now, we had a technical problem this week. And so we ended up losing a few minutes of the recording at the beginning. So ordinarily, Greg reads the piece of feedback and then gets my instant reaction. So this week, my intention was to read the feedback and get Stephen's reaction.

Unfortunately, we lost that in the technical mishap. So we're going to be missing Stephen's reaction because I had to re-record the beginning of the podcast here. However, I still wanted to read the piece of reader feedback and just talk about it briefly. So this week's reader feedback came from Neos, and he was responding to a comment about old comments on posts. And he said, Hey Nick, speaking of old comments, I don't know if this is the place to mention it, but I've noticed in posts regarding a recurring event, for example, fee-free Visa gift cards at Staples, the comments will be old and possibly out of date. Maybe you guys are using the same post heading every time. For readers wondering if there are any new and important user data points or feedback,

they might be surprised and puzzled to only find comments from months ago. At the very least, is there a way to change the comments timestamp from 8 months ago to 4-1-19 or something like that? Keep up the great work. Well, great piece of feedback from Nios, and very astute of him to recognize him or her to recognize that we are, in fact, republishing some of those posts on recurring deals again and again. And there's a few reasons why we've been doing that. A Staples Visa gift card deal is a good example of one of those deals that comes around pretty often. They'll run the fee-free Visa gift cards, I don't know, maybe once a month, sometimes twice, sometimes not at all for a month or two. But the same deal comes back again and again. And so we made some

changes last year and started to republish those with an update. And if there are any details that have changed, we'll change that. And at the bottom, I've been adding the dates when that deal has recently run to give us an idea of the patterns in terms of how often this comes around. And I hope that readers find that useful also on deals like that. So you can get an idea of whether this is a deal that seems to come around once a month or twice a year or something like that. And there's a second piece of the reason we've been doing it that way. Actually, there's a few pieces, but another piece of the reason why we've been doing it that way is to preserve the comment history. Now, Nios makes

a great point that some of the comments could be outdated when you look at the comments on a post like that that's just been updated and republished. However, on the flip side, there are also sometimes some really good data points in the comments, and it's great to be able to preserve those. Because something that perhaps worked in the past might work again in the future. And actually, when we originally recorded this segment, Steven Pepper made a great point. And he mentioned that at a certain point in time, Dosh, which is an app you can use on your phone and link offers to your credit card, then use your credit card in person at various merchants and earn cash back. Dosh was offering cash back at Staples in-store for quite a while. So, for example, I was able to connect my Chase Ink Plus to Dosh, and so I'd earn five points per dollar on my Chase Ink Plus at an office supply store like Staples,

and then I earned an extra, I don't know, three percent back. I think the max might have been only six or seven dollars at Staples, but still, that was easy profit. It would, A, mitigate the activation fee if I were buying just one Visa gift card. And if it was a week with fee-free Visa gift cards, great, it made it a few dollars profitable to go to Staples. So that I don't think is working anymore in the sense that Staples, I think, has gone from DOSH at the moment. But the fact that there may be a comment on the post about that

can be useful because maybe in the future Staples will show up there on Dosh again, or maybe there'll be a new app. There's constantly these different card-linked offers apps and ways to earn additional cash back for in-store purchases, and you never know when something like that might come around again. So preserving the comment history can be useful for someone who's newer and then sees, oh, this worked with Dosh in the past, maybe this will work in the future. So that's one good reason to keep the comment history. Another reason I like keeping the comment history

is sometimes you'll read a deal the day it gets published, and then the next day somebody has just a nugget of wisdom, something really valuable, and you've already read the post, so you probably aren't going back to read it again. I'm seeing the comments as people comment, of course, because obviously working for the website, I get notified of the new comments on posts. But if you're not in that position to be notified of the new comments, then you might have missed something. So having the ability to kind of scroll through and see what's in there, I think can be really useful. And then obviously it's a time saver for us to not reinvent the wheel and totally rewrite a post that's basically the same again and again.

And there are a lot of benefits on the back end in terms of website stuff, where it's great if I have a post on, let's say, manufacturing status, and I mention fee-free visa gift cards at Staples, and I link to an example deal at Staples. Well, next year, if somebody goes and reads my post about manufacturing elite status, and they click through the link about Staples visa gift cards, if I had a separate post each time, that would link to just one specific Staples Visa gift card post. Whereas instead now it will connect to the most current version of whatever that deal is. Maybe that deal is going the week when they look at the post. And so it'll give them more up-to-date information. So there's a few benefits on the back end, I think, and I see for readers potentially. However, on the flip side, I definitely see Neos's point in terms

of it possibly being confusing. So that's something I think we'll look at. I had responded to that comment on the blog saying that we are in the midst of a theme redesign. So the theme will eventually be changing pretty significantly in terms of the layout of Frequent Miler. And when we do that, I think we'll have a conversation now and talk about how we want to display comments, because I think maybe a date and timestamp would be useful. So I think that was a really good piece of feedback and something that we'll look at going forward. Like I said, unfortunately, you didn't get Steven Pepper's take on that, although I gave you at least a couple of things that he had mentioned in my brief summary there of our conversation about that. All right, so that's reader feedback. So from there, I'd like

to move into a couple of posts that you wrote this week. I want to talk a little bit about your strategy, because for readers who don't know, who aren't familiar, Stephen is on a five-year, 50-state road trip. So how long have you been doing this now, Stephen? We're in the start of our third year at the moment. So this summer, we'll be officially halfway through, but we're a little behind on how many states we're getting through every year. And so it might end up being that we have to elongate the trip a little longer. So it doesn't have quite the same ring to... Five and a half year. Yeah.

So how many states have you been to so far? I think we're in Mississippi at the moment, which I think is either state 18 or 19, depending on if you class Washington, D.C. as a state. So it's not officially a state. So it's basically five-year, 50-state plus D.C. road trips. Plus one territory road trip. Very good. All right. Interesting.

So, I mean, you've made it to a decent chunk of the country. Have you been focused in one region? Have you traveled to various different regions? How have you kind of planned this out so far? We've kind of been all over, although we haven't really done much out west yet. So, we try to stay south in the winter and then go north in the summer. So, that way we have pretty temperate weather year round. And so, that's one of the reasons we're in Mississippi at the moment. We're in Biloxi by the beach. And so that's one of the reasons we're in Mississippi at the moment. We're in Biloxi by the beach. And so it's only kind of like 50 or 60 degrees, but that's still much better than being in

Montana in January. Or in upstate New York. Yes, that's very true. Yeah, I saw your pictures the other day of the beach and I was very jealous. I was like, oh my goodness, it looks sunny and warm. And even if it was only 50s, it looks sunny and warm. And even if it was only 50s, that is sunny and warm to me right now, because it's been like two or three degrees here, several of the last few nights and feeling much colder. So I'm not, I'm turning into

an icicle here. I'm not much of a cold weather guy. So I've been very jealous of those picks from warmer weather. So yeah, we also pick places based on what's actually happening at that time of year as well. And so sometimes it'll be random things. Sometimes it'll be bigger events. So last year we did the Kentucky Derby. And so we were in Kentucky during that time. Our very first year we went to Alabama during March because a town called Enterprise has the world's smallest St. Patrick's Day parade. And so that's just one person who goes up and down this one street,

and that's the parade. So it was actually a lot of fun. We ended up making some friends while we were there who we met up with in Tennessee recently as well. So that was actually a really enjoyable part of the road trip. But yeah, like, so how do they pick that person? They have, I think it was three requirements. So you have to have some kind of Irish heritage. You have to live in enterprise and you have to be able to walk or dance up and down this one block. And so it's a decent size. There have to be a few people that meet those requirements.

Yeah. And so they have an Air Force base nearby as well. So they have kind of like a steady flow of people coming through the area as well. And so, yeah, it started, I think it was, it's probably about 27 years ago now, because I think we were there in its 25th year. And so it was just a random thing, but it was kind of fun. And then a month or two later we were in ohio um because well we have quite a few friends in ohio but we picked that particular time of the year because they have a goat derby at a winery and so it's the same weekend as the kentucky derby but they

race yep so but they have this winery and so they race these um goats there and so they have 4-h kids who are sort of in control of the goats but the goats basically do what they want and so they have 4-H kids who are sort of in control of the goats but the goats basically do what they want and so they run up and then you can place bets on which one's going to win but you don't actually win anything all the money goes to I think like 4-H or to other animal charities and humane societies and things like that nearby so it was just a really fun day like drinking wine eating cheese well my wife eating cheese i don't care for that but um but yeah wait you don't care for cheese i i don't care for cheese yeah i i i know it makes it really hard living in america because everything has cheese i was thinking i was like

how did you end up in america if you don't like cheese that's a tough life it is a difficult assignment yes yeah well so so you enjoyed some wine though and i mean that sounds like a lot of That's a tough life. It is. Difficult assignment. Yes. Yeah, well, so you enjoyed some wine, though. And I mean, that sounds like a lot of fun. How do you find out about stuff like the Goat Derby? Like sometimes it would just be that things randomly show up in Facebook. Other times, if we're driving through somewhere, if we have a longish drive, we don't tend to drive much more than four hours to our next destination because we'll stay in one state and then we'll move to another state. So we do about five or six weeks in most states.

And so that way we get to see as much of it as possible. But we'll look on things like Roadside America or Atlas Obscura because they have some weird random roadside attractions. So we might go do that but yeah like a lot of the time then it'll just be something that showed up in our Facebook feed or people will deliberately share it with us because they've seen something random they know that we like doing random things as we go around and then we keep an eye to that so we have a spreadsheet with 51 tabs on it for each of the states and so whenever anything shows up then we'll add it to that list. And then just before we're planning out a state, then I'll go onto Google Maps, add a pin for each thing within the state so that that way we know exactly where it is. So kind of where we should end up staying. So that's ended up being kind of helpful trying to work out where we should be.

That's so interesting. So Roadside America, that's a website with weird roadside attractions, I assume? So some of them are like completely weird and random, like the world's largest whatever. Other things, it might be a ghost town or something like that. But it's a pretty good resource. And so it gives you an idea of the kind of things that you can see in the area along the way. was it called the mystery hole in West Virginia? Yes and no. Yes and no, right? I saw a picture of it and I was like, oh my goodness, I've driven past that a couple of times and never been inside. Yep. And we didn't go inside either. So we were in West Virginia for bridge day, which I know that you've been to as well.

And it was actually a lot of fun. And then the following day we were driving around the new river gorge area and we drove past the mystery hole and so i wasn't particularly i'd seen a flyer for it and it was like a really cheapy kind of flyer that was printed out on just regular paper from their printer or something like that rather than it being a kind of normal like laminated like glossy type thing and so i thought okay that's probably going to be kind of cheesy if they're um, like glossy type thing. And so I thought, okay, that's probably going to be kind of cheesy if it's being done that way. But then we're driving past and she was like, I really want to do that. So we turned around to go check it out, but it was closed that day. So

we still haven't been. Right. And unfortunately, I've been during Bridge Day weekend a few times. So I think probably each time that I've driven past, it's also been closed because I think it closes at that time of year, I think is what you said. So disappointing. But you know, one of those weird things. And if you're wondering, what are we talking about? Well, you're going to have to get online and take a look and get on No Home Just Rome, Stephen's site, where I'm sure you can see some pictures of stuff like that, right? So how often do you guys update your site? And again, for those who aren't familiar with Stephen's site, it's nohomejustroam.com. How often are you updating with these types of things? In the past, like before we actually started the road trip, we started publishing about a year before kind of with leading up to the road trip, any travels we were

doing up to that point, kind of all our planning and our minimizing and all that kind of thing. And so at the time, I was writing probably five or six posts a week. and all that kind of thing and so at the time I was writing probably five or six posts a week now it's kind of in the like three to five posts a week range just because we're so busy with everything that it's hard to write quite as frequently so I've got like hotel reviews there like things that we are doing along the trip so sometimes it'll be the random quirky things other times it'll be like, kind of more normal things that you might do, like the Kentucky Derby and Bridge Day and stuff like that. Although I guess Bridge Day is kind of quirky, given that it's a celebration of a bridge in West Virginia. But you get people base jumping off there.

And so if you find that post on our site, there's a video of a guy getting catapulted off the bridge to base jump, which was kind of nuts. Wow. Yeah, that does sound nuts. I've seen people base jump off and I have not seen anybody catapulted off of the bridge. So that's pretty intense. And, you know, so that's pretty neat. That's interesting. And I know I started out this conversation by saying I was going to talk about posts you wrote this week and then talk about the road trip. But I'm excited now talking about the road trip. So we're gonna get to the posts after I ask you more questions. So now you got me kind of curious because I know you've already mentioned that the trip has gone a little slower than you expected. And you were saying now that you've posted a little bit less often than you anticipated because things are busy, I'm sure. So in what ways has the trip, or let me start with this,

has the trip met your expectations, exceeded your expectations, fallen short of your expectations? And in what ways has it done those things? Um, it can be hard as well because we move every five to seven days, then that's not as much fun. And so, because it means like packing and unpacking and driving to the next place. And, um, we have pretty much everything that we own in our car and we don't like to leave stuff in the car because we had, um, our car broken into when we took a brief detour into Canada, um, a couple of years ago. And so we try to bring stuff in. Yeah, I know. Tell me about it. And it was parked in an inside parking lot at a nice hotel there as well. What are the chances of that?

Who would believe that? Of all the places that it happened, it was in Canada with the nicest people, supposedly. Which I love Canadians. I was joking, right? Anybody who didn't capture the sarcasm there i love canada i've been a number of times that it gets hilarious that with all the traveling you do that's the place the car gets broken into not that getting broken into is hilarious it just kind of seems like what are the chances of that yeah so thankfully they only made it away with one

small case that didn't have a huge amount of stuff in although it did have some um i think it was like mother's day and father's day gifts that we'd picked up for um shay's parents so that was a bit of a shame because we picked it up in places we'd been to on the road trip so we couldn't just go back there to get the same things again because they were kind of unique but um but thankfully it wasn't all of our stuff that got stolen so um that's something. So yeah, like the moving constantly isn't as much fun, but that's also kind of self-imposed and so because of the way that we've decided to do this. So when we first started out the road trip,

there were some places we stayed and we were only staying there two or three nights at a time because we figured, okay, it's not a huge place. We don't need much time there. But then by the time we arrive there like we pack up from one place um drive to wherever we're going and then unpack then usually it's kind of late afternoon evening time by then and we're tired or we might have stuff we need to work on so then we don't do anything that day and then we might only have one full day there if we're

only spending a couple of days and then we've got to pack and unpack for the next destination so in the end we realize that two or three days isn't worth it so we tend to do at least five days in a place but more recently we've started staying a little bit longer in places sometimes like 10 days or something like that and then just staying in fewer places in a state just so that way we don't have to move quite as often but it means that we have a bit more energy to be kind of going out to do stuff so yeah we've been getting a little more tired than expected as well just because it's a lot of planning as well so I spend way too much time organizing hotels and things like that and trying to work out what we're going to do in each place and things like that. So I'm glad that we have our spreadsheet where we keep track of all the ideas that we got.

But yeah, it's especially the research for accommodation. And it's getting kind of really intense again because my parents are going to come join us for six or seven weeks on the road trip while we head out west because the Grand Canyon is on their bucket list. So they're coming out in a couple of months and so we need to plan that part of it because we're going to be doing the Grand Canyon we're going to do the Utah National Parks we're going to head up to Yellowstone and Grand Teton and then back again so we've got kind of six or seven weeks of planning for that but then we're spending the summer in alaska and so i really need to get on with booking our accommodation there because there's probably a lot of stuff that's already gone or expensive so we'll likely be staying in a lot of airbnbs while we're there

um but yeah and really need to get on that and book and so yeah that and we're going to be there until kind of september october time depends on if we get picked in the Denali lottery that Greg did with Stefan last year. And so that's potentially eight months worth of accommodation that we need to book fairly sharpish. And so it's a lot of research and a lot of deciding, should we do Airbnb? Should we use points?

Should we look for best rate guarantee options and all that kind of thing? So, yeah, it's a lot of mind exhaustion rather than necessarily physical exhaustion that the road trip is about. Yeah, you know, and I think that it sounds glamorous to be traveling all the time. I think, you know, and in some respects it is obviously glamorous to have that lifestyle where you can do that and pack up and leave and go to a new place every day. But on the flip side, I can definitely sympathize with how much time goes into that. I mean, I think most of us plan one or two vacations a year. And even that takes up some time and concentration in terms of looking for award flights and figuring out destinations and things to do. And the planners among us will think about how long it takes them to plan a trip for one or

two weeks. And imagine doing that week after week after week after week. And then for those people who haven't traveled constantly like that before, I got to say, I've never traveled nearly as long as Steven Pepper is, but I've done some trips that were four, five, six, eight, nine months long. And it is exhausting in terms of booking that next thing in the next year, because you constantly feel like you can't just sit back and relax because you got to book the next thing, right? So I can't imagine three years, four years, five years, I can see where that does get more tiring than probably most people anticipate. And speaking of planning that out and figuring things out, this week's reader question at the end was going to be about that, but I'm going to just get into it right now with you. So how do you determine whether you're going

to use hotel points or an Airbnb or pay a cash rate? A reader asked about that this week, and I just want to kind of jump into that because I imagine a lot of people are curious how you do it. How do you figure out whether you should use 20,000 IHG points or pay the cash rate or stay at the Hilton or whatever else it might be? Okay, so yeah, there's a lot of kind of factors that go into it. And so that's one of the reasons it ends up taking so long, just kind of mentally trying to work out what the best either redemption or paid option is so if I ever find any kind of paid option that's no more than kind of 80 bucks or so including tax then I'll tend to go for that just because that's a pretty decent rate and it means we earn points on that and then hopefully whatever hotel chain it is

is running some kind of quarterly promotion or something like that and if it's IHG or Marriott and Hilton to a certain extent then you can also earn cash back by clicking through from a portal and so that kind of makes that okay but there aren't all that many places that are always available at 80 bucks a night and if they are then they're not always pet friendly which is another problem that we encounter is trying to find pet friendly properties because we travel with our dog and so that kind of limits us to probably only about 40-50 percent of hotels if that and so some options which might be a good option for other people aren't always possible for us so so yeah if we can find a fairly cheap option like

that then we'll pay um and then save our points for when room rates are more expensive and we tend to stay a lot of category one and two hotels especially with Hyatt um so there are a lot of Hyatt places that are only 5,000 points a night around the country and so we've spent 60 nights the last two years at higher places a lot of the time with them being category one booking them as award stage just because that's incredibly good value most of them are pet friendly and so that's been good and it means that it's kind of automatic globalist status when staying on award stage 60 nights a year for 5,000 points a night so that's ended up being quite helpful for times when we're not staying at higher places because then it means we got the status for

upgrades and things like that with IHG then we tend to book in four or eight night chunks because Shay and I both have the IHG premier card, and so that gives you the fourth night free on awards days. And it's every four nights rather than only the first fourth night. And so booking eight nights means you get the fourth and eighth night free and so on. And so we'll do that. And ideally, we'll book at the 10,000 point level so that that way we can maximize those points. And usually that means a candlewood suite, which is kind of helpful because it means that we have a kitchen. We don't normally get a one bedroom suite, which is a bit of a shame with that because IHG just is really not good about upgrading you, even if they have rooms available.

With Marion and Hilton, we'll book in five-night increments because they offer the fifth night free. And so we don't often find Hilton properties that are worthwhile with redeeming points set. So when I do find them, then I kind of like jump on that because I try not to spend more than 20,000 points a night on Hilton properties, even though it's fairly easy earning the points. I'd much rather book somewhere else if there's a better redemption. Whereas with Marriott,

for as much as we like to hate on Bonvoy, I've actually had some pretty good luck with finding category one and two properties, even at the off-peak rates as well which has actually been pretty nice so we stayed at a residence in in jackson recently in mississippi and that was that ended up being 4750 points a night um averaged out over 10 nights and that was for a one-bedroom suite and um that's another good thing about marriott that i found recently is that when you um there were quite a few town place suites and residence inns where you can book straight into a one-bedroom suite when using points, even though that room type's actually more expensive than when you're paying cash. And so that's actually been pretty nice. And then breakfast is included, you have a kitchen

and things like that. So living in hotels, it's always helpful when you have an actual kitchen rather than just relying on our portable kitchen. And so we don't tend to book any awards days with Wyndham just because I'm not a big fan of their loyalty scheme. I know that you had some great redemptions with a couple of big wins in the UK. So I have something like 45,000 points. So that could get me up to six free nights. But whenever we do book any Wyndham properties, it's usually through hotels.com, paying with gift cards that we bought at 20% off. And so that way, we collect the welcome rewards for those as well. And we occasionally have a few choice hotel stays, but they're kind of few and

far between as well, just because they're either properties where we wouldn't necessarily want to stay or they end up being disproportionately expensive considering we could book a higher place for a paid option for similar amounts sometimes so and then other times we'll book through Airbnb so one of the nice things about Airbnb is that you can pick up discounted gift cards especially with things like the Amazon and American Express. Using one membership rewards point offer, you get 50 bucks off 250. So whenever that comes around, I buy 250 bucks worth of Airbnb gift cards on my account and do the same for Shay's. And so it means that we get 20% off Airbnb gift cards, which certainly helps. And so...

Saves you $100 cash right there that you probably were going to spend. Yep. And so I've got several thousand bucks worth sitting in our Airbnb account at the moment, just where I've stocked up in the past, just because I know that we're always going to end up using it on the road trips.

And Airbnb has actually been really good at times for where we've wanted to stay in a city and so room rates at hotels might be more expensive whereas airbnb you might be able to get a good deal and then again you've got a kitchen it's easy to filter for things that are pet friendly you can move the map around and they offer a lot of great functionality on the website for finding things in certain spots. And you can select by free parking and Wi-Fi and any kind of other amenities that you might need. And so that's been helpful as well. So last year, we spent 60-something nights in Airbnbs.

But then the first year of our trip, we spent over 100 nights in Airbnbs just because it worked out that way that there were some really good options there. Wow. So, you know, I wrote in Week in Review a while back about an issue with scammy Airbnbs because there was a big thing over a Vice article, I think, or a reporter that used to work for Vice or something that wrote this kind of expose about these scammy Airbnb hosts that were making up fake listings and stuff. Have you had any issues with Airbnbs? Have you had any that didn't work out to be as you expected or where you've gotten scammed or run into an issue with a host? We've certainly never been scammed. And so we always pay attention to the reviews on there. And so if there's anything that's kind of less than, I guess, 4.2,

then it's a little bit like eBay where if someone's only getting 4.2 then that means that there are usually like some kind of like more serious problems. Other times we've decided to give something a try if it only has like two or three reviews and just hope that it works out. We've never had any major issues. We did end up cancelling one stay in Vermont last year because Shay's parents were coming to visit us and so we were just going to book an Airbnb and we found somewhere that was fairly cheap and so we figured okay we'll give that a go it only had like one or two reviews but it was like a five-star review so we figured okay we'll give that a try and then once we actually got the

address through after booking we had a look at it on Google Maps and it just looked like it was this kind of run down hovel like place. And it just looked kind of scary. And so we ended, because we'd only just booked it and we were able to instantly cancel it. And I don't think we were charged any kind of fees just because we didn't want to end up risking that. And we found something else that was good instead. But other than that,

we've actually been remarkably fortunate, I think, given some of the scare stories that you hear about that. Because I ended up reading that article and I was blown away that that kind of thing was going on. So it's good to be aware of those kind of issues just so that if that ever happens in the future, we hopefully wouldn't be naive and would realize kind of what's going on now that someone's trying to pull a fast one. Right. And I think that that article got enough press and the author said she had gotten contacted by the FBI that I think probably Airbnb has cleaned up its act a bit on that. If he hadn't read about it, the short version of that particular scam was people were arriving and then the day of arrival, like check-in time kind of a thing, they were receiving a message from the property owner,

the host saying, oh, the previous guest flooded the toilet or something like this. And for one reason or another, the original unit they rented wasn't available, but they had something else nicer that they could put them in instead. And it was turning out to be a really scammy thing with a terrible place to stay and not much response from Airbnb. On the flip side, though, there are lots of great positive stories out there. And that's kind of why I asked you about it, because you have had obviously a lot of experience, more experience in a couple of years than most people will have, like ever probably booking through Airbnb. It sounds like most of your experiences have been good. So it just goes to show that there are plenty of good hosts out there too. I don't know. Airbnb is not really my thing, but I can see where it might be helpful if you're constantly traveling. Cause like you said,

then you have a kitchen. What do you guys normally do about meals? I mean, obviously if you have a kitchen, you're able to cook, but like you said, Candlewood Sweets isn't going to upgrade you to the one bedroom suite for no reason necessarily. although I guess maybe you have a little kitchenette there. How do you guys normally eat? Well, yeah, Candlewood Suites, all of them have kitchens. And so that's a kind of nice feature even if we don't have a full one-bedroom suite. But before the road trip, I realized that eating is going to be kind of one of our biggest issues because I wasn't too sure quite how much time we were going to spend in properties with kitchens versus those without and so I put together a portable kitchen so at the moment it's in a big kind of scrapbooking

like square scrapbooking case and so and it's on wheels so it stays upright and inside there we have four place settings so four plates four dishes um i've got an instant pot so that way we can make pretty much any meal we could ever want in a hotel room that doesn't actually have a kitchen and so you can make like spaghetti with meat sauce um burrito bowls and things like that um and then i've got like colanders, we got silverware for, again, for place settings, and just all kinds of stuff that's in there. So we can basically make pretty much any meal that we actually want. I'll sometimes get lazy because I can't actually be bothered to do that.

And so this could be a good segue into the next thing where I will order Grubhub instead. Right, right. So if you have the portable kitchen there, great, awesome. But if not, then you might need to order out. And this week, you wrote a post about all of the tons of different ways to kind of maximize that because, of course, now DoorDash is on everybody's radar because the Sapphire Reserve is coming with a two-year Dash Pass membership, and Sapphire Reserve cardholders are receiving a $60 credit each year this year and next year for DoorDash orders. Even Sapphire

Preferred and Sapphire members, I believe, are getting the two-year Dash Pass membership where you get free delivery and I think reduced fees. And then even Freedom cardholders and Slate cardholders can register for three free months of DoorDash. So that's a new benefit that's out. But of course, then the Amex Gold card has the $10 monthly credits that you can use for a number of different things. But one of those is for Grubhub orders, food delivery orders. And then you got Uber Eats, and you got Seamless and Caviar. And there's all these different apps out there and things to order from. And how do you pick which one and how do you maximize them? Do you have a favorite? Do you have a go to? And why do you pick that one? Is there a reward based reason why?

We just do it based on whatever credits we have from our credit cards, basically. So we don't tend to use Grubhub outside of our Amex Gold credits. They have been like one or two times where we've done it just for convenience but most of the time we're ordering on Grubhub I'm doing the pickup option anyway and so if I'm going to be going out to pick up to avoid the delivery fees then we can just order from anywhere so we wouldn't necessarily just have to use Grubhub but one of the features I really like about Grubhub is the fact that they have the new perk scheme that came out I think it was like three or four months ago where you might have local restaurants that are giving you

five bucks free to spend when spending at least 10 or 15 bucks or something like that and so what I've been finding is that sometimes it's possible to order $15 worth of food and effectively have that meal be completely free because you get the five bucks off from the perks and then the 10 bucks Amazon, not Amazon, Amex Gold credit. And so it's sometimes possible to order two meals for the 15 bucks. And so Shay and I can eat using one of our Amex Gold card credits. And then we can do the same thing the following day, either at that same restaurant using her account or at a different one nearby. And so that's actually been pretty good. And then while I was doing research for that, then I ended up finding out all these other places

where you can actually earn miles or cash back for existing customers. Because I think the first time we used Grubhub, you would only get some kind of reward when you're a customer for the first time. But at some point in recent months, they must have introduced it where like top cashbacks offering 2% or something. The MPX app is offering one mile per dollar. So it's not a huge amount. If you're only spending 10 or 15 bucks, then you're getting like 10 or 15 miles or like 15, 20 cents or something like that right right but it all adds up and so and so like in this game then you just want to get kind of whatever rewards that you can so

why not click through because it only takes an extra click or two in order to do it so right it'd be like paying cash instead of paying with your credit card right for that same thing yeah you've just given up the chance to earn a little bit of rewards. And like you said, it all adds up in the end. And sometimes that little bit can be what pushes you over to the next thing. So, so Yosuke, so we have the mileage of the MPX app. That's the United mileage plus X app that you can buy Grubhub gift cards. I assume through that, is that what it is? You can buy them through that. And so you'll earn it on that, but they also have, um, if you on the home page of the app if you scroll all the way down it says something like featured apps and then you can click through to grubhub and it'll automatically open the grubhub

app itself and so um that way you could because i i don't know how it works with the mpx app if you buy a ten dollar grubhub gift card, I'm assuming it won't trigger the Amex Gold credit, but I've never actually tested that, so that would be something interesting to try out. I'm not actually sure. I don't know, because other merchants, I know that the information does seem to pass through, and you will earn the category bonus a lot of times,

so I'm not sure. Yeah, I might have to give that a try, just out of curiosity than anything else, because you can't buy Grubhub gift cards online to trigger it because they're processed by Cashstar. But yeah, that might work in the MPX app. I don't know. Interesting thought.

Yeah, that is a good idea. But yeah, with the MPX app, then if you go down to Featured Apps, then you can click through to Grubhub there. It'll launch the app, and then you can just place your order like normal, pay with your Amex gold card, and then get the ten dollar credit any money off perks and then earn miles on whatever the transaction amount is so i haven't actually done that just yet because we haven't

used our amex gold credits yet so hoping to use those up next week because we haven't had we've had very few grubhub options in Mississippi, which probably isn't too surprising. I don't know. I mean, Mississippi's got a few cities. You mentioned Jackson. And so, you know, I know I've seen pictures from Biloxi and that sort of thing. So you guys have been in some of the bigger areas, I imagine, although I have never been. So I don't have any direct experience.

There's no Grubhub around me, though. So I can totally sympathize there. Yeah. And so I'm heading to Baton Rouge this weekend, and so I'm assuming that somewhere like the state capital of Louisiana might have something. So, I hope so. We'll hopefully get discounts on some gumbo or something. Very good. Hopefully, it's some good, local, authentic gumbo. Yes. And, you know, that's interesting to me, too, because years ago,

there was this website, and I can't remember exactly what it was called, but you know, that's interesting to me too, because years ago, there was this website, and I can't remember exactly what it was called, but you filled out a bunch of survey information about yourself, and it would give you the top 10 cities for you to live in, in the United States. And it was detailed, super detailed. It was like doing one of those personality tests. I can't remember how many pages of questions. And I think like, four of my top 10 cities were in Louisiana. And I was like, I had never even been cities were in Louisiana. And I was like, I had never even been to Louisiana. I couldn't name more than New Orleans at the time, I don't think. And still to this day, I think most of my friends anyway could probably name New Orleans, and maybe they could name Baton Rouge, not even because it's the capital, because of the Garth

Brooks song, I would think probably, calling Baton Rouge. I think that is the other reason they would come up with that. But beyond that, I think probably a lot of people where I live anyway, my part of the country, wouldn't be familiar with many cities in Louisiana, because it's so far away, and it's in the middle of the country. So I've been really intrigued to visit Baton Rouge and Shreveport. Shreveport was actually number one in my list. So I've been very curious. Okay, because when we were planning everything out, then everything that we had on our list for Louisiana was based in the south of the state. And so we're actually giving the entire top half a miss just because there was very little up there. And so we're not actually going to be seeing Shreveport. So I don't know, maybe we're going to be missing out now.

I don't know. It's hard to say. I still haven't made it there. So you're going to make it to more of the country than I have. That's for darn sure. So, what have you kind of gleaned from this experience so far? Is there something that's kind of stood out that you didn't expect from the trip so far? Anything, any lesson or interesting tidbit that you were like, I didn part of it's just been the states that I've enjoyed most have been the states that I assumed that I might enjoy the least. And so probably my top two states at the moment are Kentucky and Vermont. And I would have figured like Vermont, I might like just because of the mountains, it would be beautiful there. And so you might get some good hiking. But like Cher and I didn't have high hopes whatsoever for Kentucky. I think we kind of had this perception of what Kentucky would be like and we had an absolutely amazing time there last

year we spent I think it was six weeks there and I think two or three of their cities ended up in my top 10 list of cities for last year just because it was just a really beautiful place we visited in kind of April May time and so it was really nice weather beautiful place. We visited in kind of April, May time. And so it was really nice weather and it wasn't too hot. There were their state parks. They have so many of them that are really beautiful. There's a bourbon trail, they have good food. And so we just had a really great time.

But the other thing that I've noticed is that it's a lot of the smaller places that you would never think to actually visit that have been some of our favorite places so london um which is a city in kentucky was actually one of my favorite places that we've been so far on the road trip just because it was near um some nice state parks there was good hiking nearby um the there's a town next door sure it wasn't because it was called London? Maybe. Well, maybe that there was an underlying thing there. But there's a town nearby called Corbin, which was where Colonel Sanders used to live. And so it was the birthplace of KFC. So it wasn't where the very first KFC was, but he had Sanders Cafe there. And they've got an actual KFC on the spot where the old Sanders Cafe was.

And so they got that. Yeah, there was hiking nearby. There was a 15,000-point-a-night country inn and suites that was pet-friendly. And we just had a really good time in the area. There was, like, waterfalls at Cumberland Falls State Park and things like that. So it's just places like that there was um mantino in illinois which was just this random small town that i don't think had much more than a thousand people or something that was nice um davis and west virginia had a ton of great hiking near there and that only has i

think like 750 people or something so it's all these like kind of small towns that have been some of our most enjoyable places so I'm glad that we're spending more time on the road trip so that we can do all this kind of thing because when we were first thinking about it we figured that okay in theory you could do one week in each state and just spend a year doing it but then that doesn't give you much time to see each place and so you would kind of hit whatever the hot spot big city would be in each place just because that's where a lot of things are but you would miss huge um portions of that state where there might be other interesting stuff so yeah i think that's been my biggest surprise is like how small town america and like enterprise alabama we made some really good friends there just during our five days there

they took us under their wing um they and there was a homebrew competition um the night of the um St Patrick's Day parade and so they invited us to that um they bought us tickets including like tokens for free beer like they paid for that for us and things like that and we had a great time they took us out for dinner we went for dinner at one of their houses another night and things like that and gave us a tour around um uh the museum at the local Air Force base and things. And so it's just been random things like that that we would not have expected. We met another couple at an Apple festival in Virginia this summer, and they actually lived in West Virginia just across the border.

And so they invited us back for dinner at their place. And so we got to enjoy that. And so it's just kind of making random friendships along the way, which has been really nice too. Yeah, definitely. Really neat. That's interesting. And, you know, I think it's intriguing. You know, we often, I think, when I say we, I mean, those of us who travel a lot, those of us who use our miles and points and travel and see a little bit of the world, I think universally, we would all say that travel kind of opens up our eyes and we learn about the world. And I feel like the things that I've always said about traveling internationally, I think my international travels

have taught me more about what it means to be an American than even about the places that I visited, because I think it's given open up my mind to my perspectives that are uniquely American perspectives, so to speak, or have an American bias to them. And so I've learned a lot about myself and visiting other places and how I differ, how places have differed from my preconceptions about them, too. And so I think it's interesting to hear that happening here in the United States. I think that we would often think that, oh, maybe you had some preconception about a foreign place before you got there, and then maybe it challenged whatever that

preconception was. But interestingly here, that's happening for you even here in the United States, where presumably you probably had a decent idea of what to expect in each place, or at least you thought you did. But it's kind of neat how travel does that, how it surprises you in those different kinds of places that you didn't expect to like. I often enjoy visiting those small towns too. I live in a small town. I live in a very small town and I didn't enjoy living in a small town for a large chunk of my life because it felt like it was a small town and there wasn't a lot of exciting things going on. But at the same time, the more I travel, the more I appreciate those smaller places that are a little off the beaten path. And often when I write about IHG Point Breaks, one of the things that I point out is it gives you the opportunity to check out

a town in your own backyard that might only be a couple of hours drive away that you probably wouldn't go to because there's not necessarily a tourist draw going there. But it's kind of fun sometimes getting out and seeing someplace that you just hadn't done before. For a lot of years, I did reselling. And so we'd buy and resell stuff, which often involved driving places. So we'd drive to random towns in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Illinois and stuff like that. And I'd see these little places that, again, kind of like you expressed there that I just never, they were never on my radar necessarily. I didn't expect to really enjoy this little town, but I was surprised by something there. So I think that's kind of the neat aspect of doing this road trip that it will draw you to some places that probably wouldn't have taken the initiative to visit because you would have been drawn to the capital

city or the big city or the flashy thing, this or that. So that's kind of a neat takeaway to take from the trip. So speaking of the trip, something that popped into my mind earlier when we were talking about how do you pick which places you're going to book? And you're talking about cash rates versus points and how you use X number of points with the fifth night free with Marriott or Hilton or 5,000 points a night for 60 nights at Hyatt. So like I'm doing the math in my head and 60 nights at 5,000 points at night, that's 300,000 Hyatt points. So I'm sure that there has to be a reader or two wondering the same thing I am. Where are you getting Hyatt points. So I'm sure that there has to be a reader or two wondering the same thing I am. Where are you getting all these points from? I know you're not

a traditional manufacturer spender, and I'm sure a lot of readers don't know that. I just happen to know that about you. So how do you generate all these points if you can share? Well, my non-official New Year's resolution is to start manufacturer spending a little bit more. And so that's actually been a nice thing in Biloxi this week is because there's a Simon Mall over in Gulfport, which is only like 10, 15 minutes drive away. So I paid one trip there already this week and then I'm planning on going again before we leave. And so I'm understanding the value of that even more. Yeah, because before it was more just kind of the liquidation side of things that I wasn't too keen on. But now that it, and another problem that we have is that a lot of people use things like giftcards.com to do orders to be able to buy Visa gift cards cheaply that way.

That's not so much an option for us just because living in hotels, there's kind of added risk of getting it delivered to hotels. And so I've done it once when in order to get the $100 portal bonus for YouPromise recently. But it's not something we do all that frequently because it means we would have to time our orders with making sure that it will definitely get delivered in time to somewhere. And that may involve paying for like express shipping or something like that which then kills some of the deals so having the Simon Mall available now is actually a very nice thing and so I plan to take advantage of that a little bit more but yeah we set off on the road trip on January 1st 2018 but we actually decided to do the road trip back in April 2016 and so we had about 20 months lead time into that and so leading up to that then we applied for the vast majority of the hotel credit cards in order to beef up the points and so before we set off on the road trip we had about

two and a half million hotel points including ultimate rewards just because you can transfer those for Hyatt and that gives pretty good value I haven't included our membership rewards points in that because it's not generally worth transferring to Choice, Marriott or Hilton even with the portal bonuses like it might be okay but we have like a healthy stash of Hilton and mario points anyway so it's just not worth redeeming membership rewards for that and so we've managed to actually keep our balances pretty steady i think we're still around the like two million mark or something with um all of our hotel points and so um like two and a bit years in that's not too bad um not at all healthy balance because um so although we've had quite a few um

nights in higher places um and the vast majority of them have been redemptions there have been times where we've been able to maximize that so hyatt's been pretty good about running um promotions in the past where you earn points on awards day so maybe like 500 points or a thousand points per night and so yeah there was one I think it was in the first year of our trip where they were offering 500 points a night on most of their brands but a thousand points a night at Hyatt Place and Hyatt House and so that meant that if you were staying in a category one property it was a net cost of only four thousand and I think that was also running over the summer and so they were also offering a 10 rebate on the um for higher

credit card holders and so it ended up being a net cost of three and a half thousand points a night so um we hit that as hard as we could although it wasn't actually as it didn't line up uh so well with where we were going to be as much as i might have liked but yeah 3 500 higher points a night you can't really beat that so that was pretty nice plus because we're easily hitting globalist status then anytime you stay more than the 55 or 60 night required in order to get globalist then at the 10 night thresholds above that then you can either choose to get another sweet night upgrade or 10 000 points and so um i always pick the 10 000 points because we have a hard time using the sweet upgrades just

because most of the time we're staying in higher places so um i think we've hit 90 nights with high at the last two years and so that's been an extra 30 000 points because we've gone at the 70 80 and 90 000 point marks and so that's another six free nights each year that we get just from those bonuses and so a few of those elite night credits have been for spending on the higher credit card as well just because it's worth putting at least $15,000 worth of spend on there for the free night certificate and things like that and so that's been another way as yes some spending on the higher credit card also gets us some points. So and then otherwise, just ultimate rewards have been earning on five,

five X at Staples and Office Depot doing some Visa gift card deals and things. So yeah, it's been adds up. Yeah, that's up. That's pretty impressive to be able to have kept the balances so high constantly using them. That's, you know, that's pretty impressive to be able to have kept the balances so high, constantly using them. That's, you know, that's pretty impressive. It obviously means you've done a lot of planning for this as time has gone on and kind of plan things out. So do you have like a really strict budget each day? How do you figure out like, I know you said that if it's like 80 bucks a night, you'll pay for the hotel. And otherwise, maybe you'll look at which points make sense and that sort of thing. And I kind of have the same rule. If it's under $100 a night, I usually don't even worry about the points. I just pay for it and figure out, I'll earn the points and use them hopefully to better value in the future.

Although if you can get a 3,500 point high at place, then I might take that instead. But, yeah, I mean, I kind of have the same sort of rule. Do you have this like really budgeted out so that you know how much you can spend each day? Or do you kind of have a flexible budget? How do you do that? Well, we are doing our road trip on a budget of 100 bucks a day, which isn't all that much when you think about it, I guess. So I know that we're in a fortunate position to do this, but both Cher and I work online. And so all we need is a good internet connection.

So we just can live wherever but um but i know for a lot of people then like traveling for 100 bucks a day is probably nothing and so a lot of people probably spend more than that um when going on vacation alone yeah yeah and so um that that's one of the reasons why i don't like to spend more than 80 bucks a day because that 100 bucks a day has to include accommodation, gas, food, hotel pet fees, our phone bills and things like that and so it's actually worked out last year when I was looking at our budget then we ended up spending an average of I think it was $24.79 or something like that on accommodation per night throughout the year, which is actually less than we used to pay in rent just because we're using points so frequently. And that takes

into account things like Amex offers for like HirePlace and HireHouse or Marriott and things like that, where you get additional discounts, cash back from top cash back and things like that. So I take that into account when working out the net costs and things like that. So I take that into account when working out the net costs and things like that. But yeah, spending less than 25 bucks a night on accommodation on average has actually been pretty nice. And it's actually left that, I was surprised when I saw that figure because I thought that we had actually been spending a little more than that. So that was quite nice to see. And so it does make me want to wear the other 75 bucks a night. I've been going?

Yeah. Unfortunately, the food portion of our trip ends up being quite high in our budget each month, both for eating in and eating out. At least you save money on the cheese. Exactly. That's true. Be more expensive for me. Yeah. Because there'd be some extra cheese on if you think.

So that's pretty interesting. When you say that, like $25 a night or whatever, and cheaper than the rent that you paid before, certainly cheaper than the mortgages that a lot of people pay. Do you ever want to stop this? If you could keep that up for years, would you just continue to travel forever? Or are you kind of looking forward to the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak? Che and I have chatted about this so many times and kind of thrown around so many ideas of what we might do when the road trip ends. So at this point in time, we're not really kind of people

who plan out too far in advance, which might sound weird given that we have this five-year road trip plan. But for the most part, a lot of our plans have changed. We used to move around fairly frequently when we, like in the first 10 years that we got married, we lived in 10 or 11 different places, both in the UK and the US and Thailand.

And so we were kind of used to moving somewhat frequently. And so things would change so often that we didn't tend to make huge plans. So we talked about possibly a Canadian road trip, a European road trip, Australia or something like that. But you're not in any hurry to get out of the hotel and into a permanent spot, it sounds. Well, we've also talked about possibly being kind of snowbirds or whatever the reverse of that is. But maybe doing Vermont in the summer and then somewhere like Biloxi by the beach during the winter or something like that. And so just spending like three or six months at a time. We've also talked about like doing Airbnbs or something like that,

just in terms of like running our own Airbnbs, just because that's something that would be fun for both of us. So yeah, we're just going to kind of get to the end of the road trip and then see what we want to do beyond that. Because when I think about, okay, like do we really want to be dropping that because it is like when i think about okay like do we really want to be dropping a thousand bucks a month on rent plus having utility bills and everything like that on top of that when we can live for 25 bucks a night in hotels somebody else yeah exactly into the bathroom but at the same time it's also nice just having one place and

so there are things i do miss about not living in one place so I used to have a vegetable garden when we used to own a home and so that's one of the things that I miss most is that that was just always really enjoyable having kind of like fresh peppers fresh tomatoes and things like that and so it's just kind of those little homey kind of moments that are harder and I think it's also a little harder for Shay as well being away from her family and so we still get to see them like somewhat frequently like her mum and stepdad come out to visit us her dad's going to come and join us when we're in Yellowstone later this year my parents are going to be there too and so we still get to see them like a few times a year and things but it might be that in the future we

do still travel but not quite as intensely in terms of moving every single week and we also have our dog as well so it's not like we can just be doing like something that i think we'd both like to do is visit every country in the world but that's not really viable when we have a dog that could be around for another like 10 15 years or something like that because she's only six years old so um so we've got to take into account kind of quarantine issues if we're going to do international travel too. Right, right. Now, I don't mean to pigeonhole you into picking a place because I know you just said that you really don't know, you know, where you're going to wind up or what you're going to do after this. But has there been a place so far in the road trip

where you've been to a city or town or spot and you've been like, I know it's no home, just Rome, but this kind of feels like home. Have you been to a spot that you were like, wow, I could kind of imagine staying here for a while? Is there a spot that's like stuck out like that? I think like Vermont is somewhere that Shay and I both absolutely loved and especially the Waterbury Stowe kind of area. We visited there in kind of like May, June time the last two years. And it's just a really beautiful place. Like Vermont overall is just absolutely stunning. Like everywhere you look, there's a mountain, there's good hiking.

But especially in that area, there's so much good food and drink. There are all kinds of vineyards and distilleries and breweries in that area and nice restaurants and things like that, that if we were going to be spending several months somewhere in the summer, then I think we would pick there. We're not really skiers or anything like that. And so we don't have any kind of huge desire to spend winters there. But it would also be nice to have a snowy kind of winter at some point on the road trip.

So we'll probably do that in year four or five five it's fun for like four or five days yeah four or five days and then then you know that's enough of that so and not that you don't know about winter time i'm sure you do but yeah coming from england i right i don't know what it's like being cold and wet and i'm sure you do i'm sure you do so so i don't i don't need to tell you about that but uh but actually stowe is really pretty and i've been up to that area too so there's a stowe mountain lodge i think i don't know if it still is but it was on amex fine hotels and resorts for a while and when it's not ski season it's actually pretty reasonably priced so when you do an fhr booking and you get the hundred dollar credit and that kind of thing it's actually

a pretty reasonable uh little trip to do especially if especially if you're playing in two-player mode and you each have a card where you're able to back those up. So just a note I tossed out there for listeners that are interested in that. So yeah, that's cool. That's interesting. I don't know what I expected you to say to that, but I didn't necessarily have Vermont in mind. So neat that that's a place that ended up appealing to you. It's kind of similar in some ways to where I live.

I live in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. And so it's kind of a similar sort of a feel in the sense that a lot of nature, a lot of beautiful scenery, not a lot of people, although perhaps better food and drink in the Stowe area. Not that the food and drink here is bad, but it's not necessarily notable. They're going to spit in your food

the next time you go. Right, right. Hopefully nobody local is listening in. The food is great, guys. It's great. It's fantastic. There's a pizzeria in my town, like a Chinese food place. That's like it. So it's good, but it's not like notable necessarily.

So yeah, okay. So interesting. So you got a little thought about that anyway. So go ahead. What were you going to say? Well, I was just going to say like there's so much that we haven't gotten to do yet. So we're heading to Utah with my parents as well. And everything that we've heard about Utah said how amazing like all the national parks are.

So it might be that while we're out there, we fall in love with that. Colorado is another state that I'm really looking forward to just because there's so much good hiking, so much good craft beer and restaurants and things like that there. I think our list for things to do in Colorado is the longest that we possibly have. We've probably got at least 100 things listed on there to do, so we might need more than our average of kind of five weeks there just because there's just so much to do. Yeah, beautiful state. I've driven through. I haven't necessarily stopped and done as many things as I'd like,

but we did a road trip with friends years ago from like Albany, New York-ish area to Albuquerque. And so we drove through Colorado and absolutely gorgeous. I also took the bus once across the country. And so I spent a couple of days crossing through Colorado on that trip too. So beautiful, beautiful space to see out there. Lots of amazing things to see. So I don't envy you in picking what to see and what not to see, because even though it sounds like a lot of fun, it's got to be a little tough to

determine what you're going to do and what you're not going to do and that sort of thing. And then looking back and saying, oh, did I miss that cool thing or whatnot? So I guess you have plenty of future things. Yeah, it's often after we've left a place that we'll find out about something so we um we're leaving memphis um last month and then just literally five minutes before we left then we saw that there was a place called the slave haven underground railroad museum and it's like how is this here and we didn't like know about it so in the end when we were um staying in new albany in mississippi that actually was only kind of i think an hour hour and a half's drive from memphis so we actually drove back to do it and it was definitely worth doing but yeah there's always these other things or we'll like

leave a state and then someone um in our facebook group will comment oh did you do this and it's like no we had no clue so so that and so whenever that kind of thing happens then um we'll add it um back onto our list so that way if we ever return somewhere then we have a note that this might be worth doing so and that's another thing like you had asked about what we're going to do at the end of the five years it might be that we still really enjoy this life and so we might kind of do another loop around the country picking up on things that we've missed along the way or redoing things that we absolutely loved so there's just too many travel options out there to be able to decide. So it sounds like a lot of fun. It sounds like you've really enjoyed a lot of it. And it's also

been a little challenging because you said it's been a little, at least mentally exhausting in terms of planning things and figuring out what to do. So now that you're fairly well into this, you know, you've had quite a bit of it under your belt and still have a lot of it in front of you. In place of a reader question, I'm going to ask the reader question for the reader. Is this something you'd recommend? Is it something that people should, if they're kind of curious about this, is it something you'd say, yeah, you want to do this, go ahead and do it? Or is it something you would kind of say, you know, it sounds like fun, but I mean, is this something you would kind of say you know it sounds like fun but i mean is this something you recommend yes and no like i think i do recommend it and that we do enjoy it like i said

yeah there are challenging days um where it's not as much fun we just kind of like wish that we were just in one place and didn't have to like pack up and move and go on to the next place or feel the pressure of having to visit all the things in the local area so that we don't miss out um but yeah it is a lot of fun i definitely don't think this kind of lifestyle is probably for most people why not just because i think a lot of people not that they're necessary homebodies but they'd like having kind of some kind of stability some kind of routes being involved in their local area. Their kids might be settled in school, or they might have family that they take care of, like older parents or things like that. I think it's probably a lot more doable than people might actually imagine. Like, I think people think, okay, you're traveling full-time you must be trust fund kids or something like that we're not like 100 bucks a day isn't like um a huge amount that's 36 and a

half thousand bucks a year which a lot of people will earn in excess of that every year and so um i think financially it's certainly possible for a lot of people it's more a case of would you want to um be doing that but then the other thing as well you wouldn't necessarily have to be moving as frequently as we do we've decided to move every five to seven days so that that way in each state we can visit like a bunch of different cities so that way we don't miss anything there but there's no reason why you couldn't just go visit Louisville Kentucky for for two months, move on to Stowe in Vermont, then move on to Milwaukee for a couple of months or something like that. And so that way,

you would still be able to have some kind of routes without having to, like move all the time, then you get a good idea of the area. So I what do you think is the perfect amount of time? Now I kind of have two questions off of that. And I was going to try and wrap it up. But now you opened up two more cans of worms for me. So what do you think is like the ideal amount of time if somebody is going to do an extended stay like that somewhere? What do you think is the because I get the sense that you feel like you're packing up and moving more often than you'd like. But at the same time, you have to keep up a pace of some sort in order to get this done, get to the end of the journey at some point. So what do you think would be ideal if somebody was looking to just take it slow?

That's a really tough one as well, because sometimes when we take it slow, it ends up being too slow and we don't end up doing anything. So, it's like, okay, so if we have like a 10 night stay somewhere, it's like, okay, well, we have like another nine days to be able to do stuff. So, we'll do it tomorrow, we'll do do it tomorrow and I found that there have been times where we've booked a 10 night stay somewhere and we'll end up just crashing like the previous few months of the road trip will have just kind of taken their toll and we just won't want to do like much other than just like sleep and relax and like work from the hotel room and we don't end up seeing as much of the area as we should that happened last um i think it was last march

we um headed to chantilly in virginia and we had planned to see washington dc for like 10 days while we were there but we were both um exhausted by that point and so we did very little while we were there and we didn't end up making it into dc whatsoever i don't think at that point and so we did very little while we were there and we didn't end up making it into DC whatsoever I don't think at that point so we actually returned in August in order in August or October maybe or like September or something yeah we ended up returning like six months later to actually do Washington and DC in the end just because we had missed that and so I'd say like 10 days can give you a very good idea of an area even like five days if you're wanting to travel intensively but I think that's where full-time travel is different to when you go on vacation because when you go on vacation somewhere you're much more willing to kind of

hit the ground running and do things constantly in order to be able to see all the sites in the area just because you might never get back there and so I think a lot of people are able to keep up that pace for five, maybe even 10 days or something like that. But we just can't do that because it's the same thing for like five years. It's like when you get back from vacation, you feel like you need a vacation. But that kind of lifestyle, constantly doing that for five years, it's just not a sustainable pace. The first year, we were much more intensive about everything that we did. And we just realized that that's not a viable option, certainly for us anyway. And so we have to slow our pace, not do quite as much stuff, be more kind of discerning about the things that we might want to do.

And so people recommend things. And so I love all these recommendations that we've gotten. But there are times where we're just like, OK okay we don't have any particular interest in that so we were in North Mississippi we were fairly close to Tupelo where Elvis was born but neither of us were interested in going to visit Graceland or anything or visiting his birthplace and so we didn't end up doing that although we did have someone say well it's actually a lot more interesting even if you're not interested in Elvis. So I almost wish that we had actually done that now. I have been to Graceland. I was like, oh, that's kind of neat, actually. Okay, figures.

So there it goes. You have to go back again someday now. Exactly, yeah. So I know I'm going to wrap this up here, I promise. But there's one other question that came to mind as you were talking about all that. And that's, we were talking about the idea of just living in a hotel. And that's come up in the news a couple of times. I know there was a story about a guy who was going to retire and cheap IHG properties because it was cheaper than an assisted living facility or something like that.

And you still get somebody who cleans the bathroom and makes the bed and all the rest of that kind of thing. So that sounds kind of nice. And by some measures, that could be great because if you could do it for $25 or $30 or even $50 a night, that's probably less than a lot of people spend in rent. Even at $100 a night, that's probably less than mortgages for some people. And, of course, you don't have to deal with any of the overhead of owning a house. So that sounds pretty hot, pretty awesome, like a great idea. What is the worst part about staying in a hotel full time?

What's the thing that we're not considering when we're like, oh, yeah, that sounds pretty good. What's the part that you're like, yeah, but this is the thing you didn't think of that isn't so great about that? That's tough because i actually kind of do enjoy staying in hotels it's more than moving between them that ends up being the issue but if you're just staying in one place that's actually um not quite as bad i guess for us because we have a dog she um sometimes feels the need to protect us from housekeeping and so um we end up um we actually don't end up getting our bed made for us most days because we'll generally hang the do not disturb sign on the door

um just because we don't really need that because it's kind of our hotel room is more of our home for us now then um we don't really feel the need for that and because we don't necessarily go out each day when housekeeping are coming around then yeah we tend to leave that most of the time um on our door um but yeah i don't know i think like living in hotel again i don't think it's necessarily going to be for everyone but there are people that we've um met along the road trip who kind of stationed somewhere or based somewhere for a few months and then like sometimes we'll be walking past um someone's room at the at like a candlewood suites or redstone sin or something like that which are extended stay and you can see in their windows that they've got like photo frames up and like

flowers in the window and things like that because they're just making it like a home and so if you if you're going to be living there permanently and um staying in the same room and things like that i don't think there's necessarily any bad thing, especially if you're in kind of a one-bedroom suite where you kind of have that kind of more home-style living and you've got a separate living area, then that's not bad because then, yeah, you get your breakfast made for you each morning and things like that.

And if you're at a residence inn, then they have the mixed three nights a week where you get the free food and drink and stuff like that. So, yeah, like it's not necessarily a bad lifestyle if you're into that. Right. Yeah. I mean, it sounds pretty decent. So I think that's long appealed to me. And before I had a son and now it's a little bit more difficult, I think it would would be more difficult for me, I think, anyway, with a child. But before that, I had long talked about kind of wanting to spend a year.

Back when IHG Point Breaks were 5,000 points a night, I had long talked about wanting to spend a year just staying in Point Break hotels and trying to book 30 nights at a time and just stay in those Point Break hotels. Of course, now that they're no longer all 5,000 points a night, there's very's very few that are 5000 points a night, that's much less appealing than it once was. But I always thought that that'd be kind of a cool thing to do. And so cheap and inexpensive, since you can often buy IHG points for like, you know, next to nothing less than half a cent each. So you'd be getting those properties for like 25 $20 a night or whatever after the fourth night free. So then if you trigger some promos too, then all the better.

So there are definitely ways to do it, I think, if people want to do it. I find it really, really intriguing and very cool that you're doing this. I look forward to hearing all of the stories from the trip and kind of hearing your takeaways when you get a couple years down the line and you start to reach the final few states as to whether anything has changed or how your perspective on it has gone. So I think that it's really neat what you're doing. I think that a lot of people would probably enjoy this kind of thing. You know, my grandfather and grandmother, my mom's parents sold their house at one point when I was pretty young, and they bought an RV

and just traveled the United States in their RV for most of my life growing up. And my grandfather was always very adamant that you didn't have to leave the United States to see amazing things. And so obviously, I love to leave the United States and see stuff around the world too. But it is amazing the stuff you can see here in the US too. And now you can do it for not that many points in a lot of situations. So it can be a pretty economical way to do it as Steven Pepper has been proving to us all along here. So it's been very enjoyable having you here with us this week, Stephen. So if people want to hear more about your road trip and learn

more about the places you're going and how you're doing it and how it's going, where can they find more information? They can find us at nohomejustrome.com and that's Rome as in R-O-A-M but we also own the No Home Just Rome with R-O-M-E and so we just redirect that to our website

just in case anyone ends up in the wrong place. Yeah, and so you can check out everything on there. So yeah, we've been publishing for the last, I think like three years or so. Very good, so you get it all on the site. Is there any like an Instagram that goes with that or anything like that? Yep, we have Instagram, which is No Home Just Drone.

And then you can find us on Facebook, No Home Just Drone as as well and then if you're looking for ideas of things to do in a particular state on the home page of our website there's a map at the very top and so you can click on a particular state and that will um we've got um all of the posts for that state tagged um and so that way you can see kind of where we stayed everything that we got up to in that area um whenever we leave a state then we do our best and worst of list where we like list all of our favorite things and not so favorite things as well. So that can give a good indication as well as to things that are worth doing in an area. Very cool. Very cool. And of course, you can also catch Stephen writing at Frequent

Miler a couple days a week, because he writes quick deals for us and the last chance deals posts every week. And now that you've listened to him talk about the way that he has to shop for deals in book rooms, you know that the deals he's writing about are typically things that are pretty good deals to take advantage of. He's got obviously a great perspective on those things and find some of the great hotel promos and things that might have slipped by or slipped off of my radar. And he's able to get those up for us on the site. And we always appreciate the good work he does.

So if you'd like to read some more of those miles and points related things, you can find, of course, our site at thefrequentmiler.com. You can find us on Facebook under Frequent Miler and join the Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can connect with other miles and points travelers, ask and answer questions, and interact with other people

who are also interested in this stuff. So you can see more, again, at thefrequentmiler.com. You'll always find links to this in the various podcast forms in our week-in-review post every Saturday. So this one will publish in just a couple of days. We're recording a little bit ahead of time this time around. So thank you very much, Stephen, for being here. Enjoyed having you here today.

It was great hearing from you. Thank you very much, and thanks to all the listeners out there. Leave your feedback, your comments, that sort of thing, and we'll be sure to answer your questions as soon as we can.