Things I Love: Making Travel Easier

Here's a few apps that I sure love. Interspersed with some fotos of life in December, all except the last courtesy of Val (just to keep you entertained).  Enjoy!

Autoslash.com
It's a rental car search site. You put in your location and dates, and it presents you with a bunch of choices. You choose whatever fits your needs. Then, it checks every day to see if there's a lower rate, and if so, automatically re-books you. For my recent trip to San Diego, we had a three day rental that started out at $65, and through three effortless rebookings ended up at $31! Thats $10 a day.

Chili-night at our house with friends

Yapta.com
Val told me about this one. When you buy a plane ticket, you put in your flights, and the price you paid. Yapta checks every hour to see if there's a lower fare, and if your airline has a low price guarantee. We're headed to CO this Spring and I input our flight information a week ago. Last night, Yapta emailed to let me know the price had dropped $40/person and that I should call Alaska ASAP. In a less than 5 minute call with a very friendly agent, we got $80 back!

Bravehorse Tavern to celebrate another year of my life..

TripIt.com
You give them your email address, and they automatically scan your email for anything that looks like a reservation. When they find something, they import it, and automatically file together everything that goes in one trip. Your plane, train, hotel, car, tour (+ weather and activities) all in one place with the confirmation numbers, contact phone numbers, etc. Not only does it help me keep myself organized, but I can send all the info to an interested husband or worried mother with the click of a mouse.

Black, white & bling NYE party

Matt's spiffy Vietnam suit

Awardwallet.com
You put in your user names and passwords once for all of your mile/point accounts, and it tracks them all in one place! No more remembering 800 usernames, and wondering if you earned those points for...whatever. They do frequent flyer programs, credit cards, survey rewards, rental cars, you name it.

EvReward.com
Thinking of making an online purchase? Chances are that no matter how obscure the retailer is some airline will give you miles for it. Type in the retailer here, and they'll tell you who all will give you points, and how many per dollar so you can maximize. I got thousands of miles for my Christmas shopping!

A sad morning. Saying goodbye to Markus, the day before he heads back to Germany.

Obviously, I love TripAdvisor, Kayak, TravelZoo, and many of the other big names. But these were some slightly more obscure ones. Here's to cheaper, easier travel!

Anza Borrego & San Diego

(Those rhyme by the way)

Ok, so after departing Joshua Tree midday,  we headed to Anza Borrego Desert State Park and planned on stopping at the Salton Sea along the way, having heard it was interesting. The Salton Sea is a giant inland salty lake. It was lunch time and we imagined finding some food and eating on the sunny shores. What we found was a very different story.
(these are all Val's pictures because I was driving and um...we were scared to get out of the car. )

That sign was a lie, a big, big, lie!

There was no marina.

Nor was there a yacht club on the street called Yacht Club Boulevard

That's how I felt about the Salton Sea.

It smelled like dead fish to boot.

Needless to say, we didn't stay very long.

Right before the entrance to Anza Borrego was the biggest dirt bike park I've ever scene. I forsee myself being dragged there by my husband on some future 'vacation'.

my future

At the park we headed out on the Borrego Palm Canyon Trail. There was a ranger guy at the trailhead a our conversation went something like this

Ranger: So you should expect 2.5 -3 hours of hiking
Valerie: Isn't it only about 1.5 miles each way?
Ranger: Oh yes, but this is a wilderness trail. It will definitely take you quite a while

32 minutes later, up a trail that was at least 8x as much a trail as where we were the day before - oh hi oasis!

Anyways, we thoroughly enjoyed the fact that there was a trail, and the oasis was sweet because it actually included a river, a waterfall, and some pools. Hooray.

After that it was dark, and we made our way back to San Diego. We'd found a steal of a deal on the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines on TravelZoo a few months ago, and around Christmas I found us a both a way to get free Hilton Elite status - which meant free breakfast, internet, and space available upgrades. I wasn't really expecting to actually get a free upgrade, but we got a:

Oh, I'm so sorry, the only upgrade we have is a king room, not two queens.

Valerie and I exchanged glances for about half a second before letting the nice agent know that one king was just fine with us. Check out the pictures below and see if you agree it was worth it.

I may add, we had walked in wearing hiking clothes, covered in two days worth of desert dirt and grime, not to mention having slept in our car. Cheers to Hilton for taking us seriously anyway. We continued our streak of classiness by pouring the remaining wine from the previous night into a water bottle and heading for the hot tub. It was the perfect medicine for our sore muscles (if not for our cactus-scratched skin).

The next day dawned, well, exactly the opposite of what we hoped: cloudy and rainy. We had come to SD for sun and were rather sorely disappointed. But hey, they continental breakfast had made-to-order omelets, lox, and much more, so we lingered. Eventually, we checked out and made our way next door to Torrey Pines State Reserve, which was a cool park that would have much cooler if the sun had peeked out.

After that we drove south, stopping in La Jolla to observe the seals and other sea life, and grab some coffee. We continued making our way south towards the city, stopping at beaches and for an early happy hour, and eventually found ourselves at the airport around 5pm.

Now it's Friday and we're on our way to being no-longer-snowed-in. One last weekend of freedom before school starts up again.

Joshua Tree Nat'l Park

Back in September Alaska air was having a great fare sale, and Valerie and I were both bemoaning the fact that our men did not have MLK day off. So we decided to have an adventure anyway. The cheapest fares/ best time schedule were to San Diego and while that didn't especially inspire either of us, Joshua Tree National Park did. And a trip was born.

Our goals were to do it on the cheap (so as to not make the boys feel so bad about us leaving them behind), and to go with the wind. We contemplated sleeping in Walmart parking lots, but in the end decided the sketchiness level of that proposition was too high. We settled on car camping (as in, sleeping IN the car) at a campground in the park.

Friday evening we flew in after work and made the drive to Riverside, where we were lucky to get to stay at Lance's aunt and uncles place. Thanks Mimi and Unc for your hospitality during our short 7 hours!

Saturday we rose early and made the drive to the park, stopping a few times along the way for provisions. We drove through Palm Springs (first time) and discovered it was actually quite a bit cuter and more character than the golf haven I had pictured. The JTNP website recommended a number of hikes, most of which were .5 to 3 miles - short (for all those retirees at the Springs I guess??). We settled on the one long one - Lost Palms Oasis (that name would come to mean much).  When we got to the visitor center in the park we were told the trail to Lost Palms had been washed out by a flash flood but that there was an alternate route to get there from the back side. We signed on and headed to the 'trailhead'.

See, there actually was a trail at the beginning

The beginning of my downfall with the cholla

Then it just turned into a wash

Can you spy little Val wandering in the desert?

The 'Trail' was really much more of a 'route' that one ranger had made a few notes about. After the first quarter mile there was no distinct trail, but we followed a wide wash towards the mountains. After 3 miles we arrived at a boulder field and began to climb. Many of the boulders were 20 feet or more tall, and they presented quite a challenge to these two small ladies. Halfway up the bolder field, the canyon branched and we went (guess) the wrong way. After a circuitous and steep traverse we made it back to 'the other way, which we figured had to be correct since we had reached a summit of the first way with no sign of an oasis. We finally found our way to Lost Palm Oasis and took some time to take it I while having a bite to eat. By then we were past the time we should have left, and we scampered back at the fastest possible pace, leaping between boulders, and crawling under others. We caught a fantastic sunset as we neared the car, which slowed our pace considerably (um, did I mention we like our cameras?).

View from the 'wrong way'

Thats part of the wash we walked up

Oasis!Finally!

On the way back down. Squeezing.

Love the light

friends for eva

Everything in the desert apparently is out to get you, and Saturday was no different. We finished the day sore and coved with scratches from the various cactus and other spiky wildlife. While packing back up in the car I managed to get a cholla cactus spike stuck in my wrist. They apparently have barbs and I literally couldn't pull it out myself. Good thing I had Valerie around with a strong arm and a pair of tweezers!

We had hiked on the very south side of the park and our campground was at the north border so we had a long drive ahead of us. Stopped at In-and-Out to fill our hungry bellies and make the boys back home jealous (don't worry, they were having a glorious man night).

Josh Tree. Yes, we listened to U2 on the drive.

It was dark when we arrived at our campsite and we reclined the car seats back, pulled out the sleeping bags, and cracked a bottle of wine. I've had better sleep than in that Nissan Versa, but I didn't to freeze to death or get murdered, despite our respective mothers fears. Sunday morning we again rose early, and drove through the north park of the park to Ryan Mountain, apparently the tallest point in the park. It was a fun hike. After that we continued through the park, making short stops whenever something caught our eye, like the cactus garden. Cholla for days.

That's a Joshua Tree actually. Not Cholla. But it did catch our eyes.

It's a Dr. Suess world out there..

Um, we made it to the top of Ryan Mountain. And we were sleep deprived.

We may have also gotten asked if we were twins on the way down. But that was unintentional.

Oh, there we are. Hi cholla. You hurt me.

And with that we were off to Anza Borrego and San Diego. Up next!

You can also check out Val's version over here.