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Just like the Beverly Hillbillies, California is the place that our family of 8 has got to be!  This was a trip that I had been planning for awhile but had not gotten around to actually booking.  Thankfully in our case, procrastination (which I’m really bad at) did not bite us too badly and I was able to get the trip booked with no problem.

[The horrible thing that happened when I put off booking my hotel room]

Booking our trip

Originally I had thought about using Barclay Arrival miles to book a flight on Frontier.  CVG-SFO has gone on sale as low as $49 but as time got closer to needing to go, the cheapest flights we saw were $79 one way and $109.  For $200+ I figured I’d fly a “real” problem.

Once again, miles and points to the rescue!

Delta continues to have great availability at the saver level in economy.  Just like when we were flying back from Seattle, American and United had nothing available but Delta had great availability for 8 people, even on the direct SFO-CVG nonstop

delta-sfo-cvg-availability

It’s even “on sale” for only 11,000 Skymiles one way.  “On sale” in quotes since Delta doesn’t actually have an award chart, so the price is whatever they feel like.

A few days ago they “only” had 5 seats at the 11,000 level but this morning they had all 8, so I went ahead and booked it.  70,000 Skymiles from my surprise 2nd lifetime bonus on an Amex card and 106,000 transferred from American Express (boo to US excise fees)

Where we’re staying

We are still trying to figure out where we’ll stay – I had hoped that the Staybridge Suites Sacramento Airport Natomas would be on the newly released IHG Point Breaks list (it’s been on several times before) but alas, it was not.

We’ll probably spend 1-2 days down at Yosemite and 1-2 days in the Bay Area as well

Things to do?

Anyone have any suggestions for things to do in northern California?  As we mentioned, we’ll probably do a day or 2 in Yosemite and then go to the Bay Area as well.

I have been to San Francisco once before, but only for 4 hours on my way back after I taped my episode of Wheel of Fortune

dan-golden-gate-bridge

But it was a true whirlwhind tour – in addition to the above pic overlooking the Golden Gate bridge, I drove down Lombard Street, went to Ghirardelli Chocolate and Fisherman’s Wharf and that was about at.

So California experts – where should I go / stay?  And maybe we’ll have to have a San Fran reader meetup as well while we’re out there!


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