I absolutely cannot believe we’ve finally made it here! Andrew and I have both quit our jobs and are traveling full time! We are one month in to our 11-13 month trip, depending on how we do with our budget. We spent most of the month road tripping around the United States visiting National Parks, and spent the last four days of the month in London. I’m going to briefly cover our travels so far and give updates on our credit card points and miles and how we’ve done on our budget to date!
Days 1-25 of Full Time Travel - US Road Trip
We drove 6,000 miles in 25 days, visited 10 National Parks, and drove through 11 states! For a detailed route, itinerary, and every where we stayed, read my How to Visit 10 National Parks in 1 Epic Road Trip post.
Missouri
We started our Year Long Honeymoon off by driving 6 hours from Indiana to Lake of the Ozarks State Park. That doesn’t sound too exciting, but it only gets better from here! We stayed in a rustic cabin (no running water) in Lake of the Ozarks State Park for two days before driving to Kansas City and staying there for two days.
We had so much fun exploring the Lake Ozark area by hiking trails and renting a kayak. We also took a morning to explore nearby Ha Ha Tonka State park which has so many different and unique things to see, like the above burned down “castle.” All state parks in Missouri are free to visit, so this is an excellent summer weekend vacation spot if you’re in driving distance.
In Kansas City, we took it pretty easy but tried two excellent bbq joints: Q39 and Joe’s Kansas City BBQ. If you want to try Joe’s, make sure to get there at 11:00am when they open or you’ll be waiting in a long line. It’s still worth it if you have to wait though. We also enjoyed the Negro League Baseball Museum and went to a Royals baseball game!
Colorado
We spent 6 nights in Colorado and our first stop was in Denver. We stayed with our friend Kristi and had so much fun getting dinner with her at Wynkoop Brewery and seeing her new house. Andrew and Kristi were both trying to convince me to move to Denver after our travel adventures are over, however I’m not totally convinced yet.
From Denver we drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park and spent two days hiking and camping in the park. The weather wasn’t totally cooperating with us, but we still have a great time! I first visited RMNP last September with my dad, and I hope to have a detailed first time visitors guide up on the site soon!
After leaving RMNP we headed to Southern Colorado to visit two more National Parks and two National Monuments. First up was Great Sand Dunes National Park near Alamosa, CO and then Mesa Verde National Park near Cortez, CO. We enjoyed both parks and both can be explored in a day, or even half a day if need be. We also stopped at Chimney Rock National Monument which we recommend and Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, which can be skipped if you’re short on time.
Arizona
We spent four nights in Arizona, two at an Airbnb in Sedona and two camping in Grand Canyon National Park. Sedona was insanely beautiful and I would love to come back one day and do more hikes in the area and visit nearby state parks. On this short visit we hiked to Devil’s Bridge (below), Cathedral Rock, and The Birthing Cave.
In Grand Canyon National Park Andrew tried to get me to hike all the way down to the canyon floor and back up in one day which is 17 miles and I absolutely would have died! We only hiked 6 miles and it was really hard hiking the 3 miles up out of the canyon.
Utah
After Arizona we spent 7 nights in Utah. One night camping in Bryce Canyon National Park, two nights in an Airbnb near Zion National Park, three nights in Moab, UT where we visited Canyonlands and Arches National Parks and one night with our cousins Kyle and Lainey in Salt Lake City. This was our first visit to Utah for both of us and we loved it! The landscapes are so diverse, you almost get whiplash going back and forth from desert to gorgeous mountains.
Wyoming
Leaving Salt Lake City we drove up to Grand Teton National Park to visit our 10th and final park of the trip. We spent two nights camping in the park at Jenny Lake Campground. It was definitely the prettiest campground we stayed in on this trip, or probably ever. We did the full loop hike around Jenny Lake and drove to some of the park viewpoints.
After an amazing and short time in Wyoming we drove 22 hours back to Indiana through Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois, spending the night in Des Moines.
Weekend in Indiana
By the time we got back to my mom’s house after our roadtrip we had just under 48 hours to unpack our car, get it all cleaned up for my mom to use while we’re gone, store our camping equipment at my grandpa’s house, spend time with our dog, attend a friend’s wedding, do laundry, and pack our backpacks for our year abroad. It was quit the hectic weekend, but everything worked out and it was so nice to see friends at the wedding before leaving the country for a year.
Our friends Betsy and Michael (who are visiting us in Germany next month!) live in Chicago but were in Indiana for the wedding and drove us up to O’Hare for our flight Sunday evening. The international terminal was crazy busy, but nothing took too long and our journey to London was relatively uneventful.
London, England
Our first international stop on our Year Long Honeymoon was in London! We spent four nights in a shared Airbnb exploring the beautiful city. We landed late Monday night and had an early flight Friday, so we really only got to spend three full days in London. Our highlights include a 5 hour walking tour that I booked through Airbnb, seeing Ed Sheeran at Wembley Stadium, and briefly walking through the British Museum and the Tate Modern art museum, both of which are free!
We also had some good food including fish and chips, mushroom risotto from The Borough Market, Indian food at Dishoom, and yummy breakfast pastries.
Our time in London seemed very short, and there’s so much more I want to come back and see, but it will have to wait until I have a little more money to spend – London is definitely not friendly to our budget!
Credit Card Points Update
New Point Gains
My biggest update here is that I signed up for the Capital One Venture X, got the sign up bonus of 75,000 points and then referred Andrew to the Capital One Venture X card. I will get 25,000 points for the referral soon and he will get 75,000 points after meeting the minimum spend for the sign up bonus. Combined that is worth at least $1,750 dollars of travel which we desperately need after our budget failure on our road trip. Additionally I received a 15,000 referral bonus from my Chase Sapphire Preferred and another 25,000 referral on the Venture X card.
Other notable points are 10,282 IHG points from staying 3 nights at Holiday Inn Expresses on our road trip, and I will get another 3,000 IHG points when my CC statement closes for 10x points on IHG spend on my IHG Premier card.
We also each got 2,492 United points from our TAP Portugal flights from Chicago to London. You can choose any airline within the airline aliance your flight is in to credit your points to. United and TAP Portugal are both in the Star Alliance.
New Point Bookings
I’ve made three new point bookings since my last update post in April.
- I used 33,000 United points total to book a flight for each of us from Dubrovnik to Berlin with a layover in Vienna. We had to pay $40 in taxes and fees each, and the flights were worth $250 each. This gives us a cent per point (CPP) value of 1.28 or ($500-$80)/33,000. This isn’t the best redemption but it was the best we could find for this route on the specific day we needed.
- I transferred 25,000 Citi points to Choice Hotels. Citi points transfer to Choice Hotels at a 1:2 rate, so I got 50,000 Choice hotel points for this transfer. I then used the 50,000 points to book two nights at Hotel Aquarius Venice in Venice, Italy! The two nights are worth $570 and there are no taxes or fees to pay in cash so we’re getting a 2.29 CPP for our 25,000 Citi Points!
- I used 33,000 IHG points to book 4 nights at the Holiday Inn in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. When you book reward nights through IHG the 4th night is free, so I always try to book IHG stays in four night increments. The four nights are worth about $300 so I’m getting a .9 CPP. IHG points are worth less than most other points so anything above .5 is typically good for them.
Updated Point Totals
Kailyn American Express: 296,016 points worth ~ $3,552
Kailyn Chase Ultimate Rewards: 18,514 points + Andrew Chase 130,961 points worth ~ $2,242
Kailyn IHG: 55,661 points worth ~ $278
Kailyn Delta : 39,296 points + Andrew Delta: 20,800 points worth ~ $780
Kailyn United: 6,452 points + Andrew United: 20,808 points worth ~ $308
Kailyn American: 4,253 points + Andrew American: 63,500 points worth ~ $813
Kailyn Citi Thank You: 681 points worth ~ $10
Kailyn Capital One: 111,355 points + Andrew Capital One: 768 points worth ~ $1,682
Total Rewards Points Remaining: 769,023 redeemable for about $9,667
An increase of 87,519 points and $1,575 from my last update at the end of April.
If you’d like a referral link to any of the following cards, please let me know as it will support our travels and help us stay on the road longer: any American Express card, but specifically Amex Platinum, Amex Everyday Preferred, Amex Delta Skymiles Platinum, Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, IHG Premier, Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority, Capital One Venture X.
How's Our Budget So Far?
Our budget for the road trip was $150 a day for 25 days (plus 2 days at home with my mom) and our London budget was $200 per day for 4 days.
That puts our total budget for the US at $4,050 but we spent $5,502.03 so $1,452.03 over our budget, or $53.78 over budget per day. I would say about half of that difference is due to gas prices and the other half is a mix of last minute hotel bookings and wanting to eat out instead of cook.
Our budget for London was $200/day for four days so $800. We spent $884.34 or $221.11 per day. The below photos show our most expensive London meal at Fish! ($82) and our cheapest, a grocery store sandwich and bag of chips each ($8.50.)
In total for the first full month of the trip we are$1,536.47 over budget. I have a good feeling about the next few weeks though and hope to make some of that up!
If you have any questions about how I created our budget or any specific costs, please let me know and I’d be glad to go into more depth.
What's Next?
July is going to be an exciting month for us! Well I hope all our months this year are exciting, but this month we get to see family and friends in Europe! We’re also visiting four new countries we’ve never been to: Czech Republic, Poland, The Netherlands, and Germany. Please let me know if you have any tips or suggestions for those countries.
Stay up to date on my most recent Year Long Honeymoon posts!
How I Got 55 Free Hotel Nights During My Year Long Honeymoon (and how you can too!)
Thanks for following along on our adventure of a lifetime! Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions about any of the places we’ve visited, or our year long trip in general, and I’d be happy to answer them. Until next time
2 Comments
Woooah what an amazing start to your trip!! The road trip around the USA to those national parks sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, and that’s just you guys getting started!! It sounds like a pricy start, but I have a feeling it’ll get easier to budget once you’re away from London! Are you going around the UK for a bit?
Great work on the points – it’ll be cool to see how you keep adding those up as you travel around the world. 🙂
What a great first month of travel. 11 states and 10 National Parks makes a great start. It looks like the weather has been great for all the beautiful outdoor stops. Great to keep track of your budget and see what drove the overage. Especially when things like gasoline are out of your control.