We recently flew my wife’s sister and her family, five people in all, to Charlotte from Managua (more on that booking later). As part of showing them around town, we wanted to take them to someplace fun but still relatively close by, since a road trip with seven kids (four of ours plus three of theirs) is a lot of work.

I have three favorite drives in the United States: Route 1 up the California coast between Santa Barbara and San Francisco; Highway 1 from the Everglades to Key West; and pretty much anywhere on the Blue Ridge Parkway. For those of you who have never been, I highly recommend it. Like the Pacific Coast Highway, it’s a two lane road that’s more about scenery than about getting you rapidly from point A to point B. This is what it looks like in the fall: [Read more…]

Things are looking up for credit card aficionados! Consider:

• According to Cardhub, card sign-up bonuses increased 5% in the second quarter. Interestingly, the article notes, “And some consumers have likely learned over the years how difficult it can be to actually use the rewards that credit card companies dangle in front of them. Such restrictions are part of the reason that a third of all credit card loyalty awards dispensed each year are never redeemed.”
• The Cardhub study also notes that bonuses are up 10% year-over-year.
• Citibank is adding airline transfer partners! See Miles Professor for more. Hopefully Citibank will introduce some new options for earning ThankYou Points as well.
• My wife just got her 50,000-point Fifth Third card.
• A friend of mine just received two solid targeted sign-up offers: Capital One Spark ($500 cash back with a $4,500 spend) as well as the 150,000-point Amex Platinum offer shown below. It’s $10K for the first 100,000 points, plus $10K more for the next 50,000. It’s a lot of spending but 150K MRs is good compensation.

EDIT: I’ve also added in a scan of the Spark offer.

Recently on TravelBloggerBuzz, famed commenter harvson3 left this comment about how to be a points-n-miles blogger: [Read more…]