Save On Road Trip Expenses With The Right Credit Card

by Chris Owen on

Planning a road trip anytime soon? Odds are the price of gas is a consideration if not a major concern. As gas prices continue to rise, travelers are looking for new ways to save. Tuning up the car, using smartphone apps to find the lowest price around, inflating tires properly and other money-saving measures can help. Using the right credit card can gain big savings too.

The current national average is $3.78 per gallon – nearly 14 percent higher than it was at the beginning of the year – meaning that gas prices exceed $4 per gallon in some states. Having the right credit card can help. But which to choose? Of the two types of credit cards – gas station-affiliated cards and generic gas cards- there are more than 1000 offers out there right now.

“The credit card market continues to offer surprisingly lucrative gas rewards without requiring consumers to fill up at one particular station or another,” says credit card authority Odysseas Papadimitriou, former Capital One executive and CEO of Card Hub, a credit card rating organization that just released its list of the Best Gas Credit Cards.

According to Card Hub, generic cards used for gas can produce some of the best savings.

The best generic cards?
Pentagon Federal Credit Union Platinum Rewards Card – This one offers those who pay at the pump points equivalent to 5 percent cash back on gas at any station plus 3 percent cash back at supermarkets and 1 percent on other purchases. While the card has no annual fee, belonging to PenFed Credit Union costs $15 and members do not have to be affiliated with the military.

Blue Cash Preferred Card from American Express – This card gives 3 percent cash back at gas stations, 6 percent at supermarkets and 1 percent everywhere else. The $75 annual fee is offset by a $150 initial bonus for spending $1,000 in the first three months.

TrueEarnings Card from American Express – Costco members get 3 percent cash back on gas purchases up to $4,000 (1 percent thereafter), 2 percent at restaurants, 2 percent on travel and 1 percent on everything else.

But what about gas station-sponsored cards?

“When it comes to choosing a station-specific gas credit card, it’s important to remember that value is inherently conditional,” says Papadimitriou. “In other words, you’ll have to get gas at the right station and oftentimes spend a certain amount each month or year in order to qualify.”

The best gas station cards include:

Marathon Credit Card – This brings a 25-cent rebate, but the offer has a catch. That $.25 is for each gallon of Marathon gas purchased during months a cardholder charges at least $1,000, $0.15/gallon for spending between $500 and $999.99 and $0.05 for spending less than $500. This card does not have an annual fee or an initial bonus.

Chevron & Texaco Credit Card – This card provides a $0.30/gallon, up-front discount on Chevron and Texaco gas for the first 60 days after opening the account. After that, you get $0.20/gallon off during months that you spend more than $1,000 in qualifying purchases and $0.10/gallon off when you spend $300-$1,000. Qualifying purchases include most charges made with your card with a maximum of $300 in discounts each calendar year.

Card Hub also notes other ways to save on gas, like shopping at certain grocery stores. Kroger, Safeway and others offer discounts at affiliated gas station chains based on how much you spend at their stores. For example, spending $100 at Safeway will save you $2 on the next 20 gallons of ExxonMobil gas you buy.

That idea is especially powerful when travelers combine it with the respective station’s co-branded credit cards.

Looking for other ways to save on gas? Check out this video:


[Photo credit – Flickr user little peppercorn]

Colorado Ski Resorts Offer Spring Break Deals, Special Events, Statewide

by Laurel Miller on

Still mulling over where to spend spring break, be it solo, or with friends or family? Colorado Ski Country USA resorts make it easy, with a handy online guide promoting special deals and events statewide throughout March and part of April.

In addition to loads of concerts and fun and endurance ski races at most resorts, there’s also the famed Elk Mountain Grand Traverse backcountry race from Aspen to Crested Butte, and Battle in the Bowls in Aspen Highlands. Crested Butte is also celebrating Colorado Passholder Appreciation Month through March 6; anyone holding a season pass, regardless of resort, can ski CB for $59.

Copper Mountain hosts the Copper Uncorked “working man’s wine festival” on March 10; think affordable vintages, and nontraditional pairings a la pizza, wings, and breakfast burritos. Aspen and Telluride are offering variations on “kids ski and stay free” programs, and Wolf Creek has Local Appreciation Days March 6 and 13, and April 3 and 7. Lift tickets are just $35/adult or student, $29/child/seniors. Get those plane tickets booked now!

[Photo credit: Flickr user Ben Moscona l Photography]

Budget Locations For Spring Break Travel

by McLean Robbins on

Spring break is just around the corner, and if you haven’t already planned a trip, our friends at Expedia have mined their price stats to come up with some of the most budget-friendly locations around. From family-friendly to party-hearty, these trips won’t break the bank.

Tampa, Florida
Home of the New York Yankees’ spring training camp, this sunny destination has much to offer both families and singles. A four-day, round-trip flight from New York into Tampa starts at $180.

San Juan, Puerto Rico
If you’re looking to brush up on your Spanish, check out Puerto Rico’s capital city, San Juan. A five-day, round-trip flight starts at $279 and with average lows hovering around 73° in April, San Juan is sure to please. This popular destination has made one of the most coveted travel spots this year, and new hotels make this an exciting spot for luxury and budget seekers alike.

San Diego, California
This sunny city is an increasingly popular Spring Break destination. For stays between March 8-16, there are a number of package deals available (flight + hotel) for less than $800/person on Expedia. For $772/person, you can stay at the beautiful Dana on Mission Bay between March 9-16 with travel from New York.

Orlando, Florida
Whether you’re headed to Disney World or just seeking fun in the sun, it’s possible to find flights AND hotels for under $300 total when traveling from New York City.

[Image Credit: Flickr via yazmapaz & ace heart]

A Long Lesson From A Short Walk On The Karakoram Highway

by Don George on

I’ve just come home from a whirlwind week in D.C. and L.A. Both trips were wonderful. In D.C. I had energizing meetings at National Geographic Traveler and hosted an exhilarating onstage conversation with the amazing Alexandra Fuller, author of (among other books) Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, an extraordinarily evocative and moving memoir of growing up in Rhodesia. In L.A. I gave a talk about Gadling at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show and shared memorable moments with Arthur Frommer, Rick Steves, Andrew McCarthy, and the Times’ terrific travel editor, Catharine Hamm, among many other notables of the travel world. I got back to the Bay Area just in time to emcee the February event in the wonderful new Weekday Wanderlust travel reading series in San Francisco, and then to teach a wanderful travel writing workshop at Book Passage in Corte Madera.

I’m not complaining. I’m grateful beyond words for these opportunities — but now that they’re over, I realize that I’m also exhausted beyond words. (And yes, I know I probably shouldn’t have stayed up until closing time at the rooftop bar of the Standard Hotel in L.A. – but that was research!) And when I survey the Kilimanjaro of emails that need my slogging-up-the-scree responses and the queue of articles lined up like planes at O’Hare awaiting the fuel of my words for take-off – well, if the state of my metaphors is any metaphor for the state of my mind, I’m in big trouble.

At a moment like this, I know just what I need to do: take some deep breaths and transport myself back to an adventure I took three decades ago in northern Pakistan — specifically, to one afternoon on a stretch of the wild, gritty, avalanche-threatened, pothole-punctured Karakoram Highway between Hunza and Gulmit, not far from the Chinese border.

My tour group had been bumping by van along the Karakoram for a few hours when we came to a road-closing avalanche about 15 minutes from Gulmit. Our guide set out to walk to Gulmit to get another van to pick us up, and told us to wait in the van.

We waited, and waited.After a while, waiting for another avalanche or rock slide to sweep us into oblivion seemed pretty silly, so I decided to set out on foot for Gulmit, too. There wasn’t much chance of making a wrong turn — the next intersection was four hours away.

And so I walked, as alone as I have ever been, into an awesomely uncompromising landscape: a rocky, gray-brown world of sere, monumental mountains, boulders looming by the side of the road, and — whenever I stopped to listen — absolute, ear-ringing silence.

As I walked, my footsteps feebly scrunch-scrunch-scrunching into the implacable air, I imagined the traders, missionaries and adventurers who had wandered that same trail before me, and wondered what dreams and doubts had filled their heads.

I thought too about the companionable people back in the van and about the warm food that awaited at the Silk Route Lodge, but most of all I thought about nature and time, about how my life was like one grain of sand on the slopes of one of those mountains.

Scrunch. Scrunch. Scrunch. I imagined straying off the path and scrambling crazily up a scree-slippery peak; I tried to absorb the silence; I strained a handful of pebbles through my fingers.

Scrunch. Scrunch. Scrunch. I considered the clouds, a scraggly tree, a boulder twice as big as me.

Scrunch. Scrunch. Scrunch. I listened to my own breath coming in and going out; I listened to the pounding of my frail and all-too-human heart.

In one sense, nothing much happened: Eventually I reached the warm waiting room at the Silk Route Lodge, and the others arrived by van a half-hour later.

But in another sense, everything had changed: I had seen the strangeness of the world, the rawness and beauty and sheerness of it; the age of the Earth; and our essential solitude — how we are born and die alone. I had seen the smallness of man and the largeness of the human spirit that dares to create and to love.

I had realized just what a precious gift life is, as are the people with whom we share it; and I knew that one day in the future, when life seemed about to avalanche out of control, I would stop and say: “Savor the world one step at a time, just like you did on the Karakoram Highway.”

[Flickr image via Marc van der Chijs]

The Great Los Angeles Train Resurgence

by David Farley on

I was on a commuter train – in Los Angeles. I kept repeating these words to myself as the Metrolink light rail whisked me through East LA, the city’s underwhelming skyline in the distance. Union Station was the next stop and terminus. From there I’d gawk at the station’s interior, in all its Art Deco beauty, and then hop on the red line to Thai Town.

Yes, that’s right: the subway. The Los Angeles Metro Rail, as it’s called, consists of six lines, all named by color, that snake through the greater Los Angeles area, mostly above ground but, as in the case of the line I took, the red line, underground as well. An Angelino can now travel from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach. And that’s just the Metro Rail. There’s also the Metrolink, which goes even further afield and has been running since 1992.

Until recently, “public transportation” and “Los Angeles” seemed like antonyms, antipoles that were part of two different worlds. There are cities all over the planet with functioning rapid transit systems, subways and monorails and trains; and then there was Los Angeles, which seemed to exist outside the sphere of normal cities, an exception to the rule where cars reigned on the road and the most popular form of self expression was found on one’s vanity plate or personalized license plate.When I was growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, there were no trains or subways or light rail. There were only busses, frequented by crazy people who would boisterously yell “Bye bye!” to every person before getting off and by grumpy geriatrics whose licenses were revoked because they’d plowed their Oldsmobiles into a family of four, mistaking them for speed bumps (which is, essentially, what they became).

But before that, Los Angeles had an extensive public transportation system that covered 1,000 miles of the city. Revenue losses during the Interwar period were the death knell for the system. And, though contested, there’s the Great American Streetcar Scandal, which asserts that a GM-led consortium bought up the system and dismantled it to inspire people to buy more automobiles. If that’s true, it worked. Los Angeles has been an annoying miasma of steel and concrete ever since.

Maybe some day that will completely change. Last week, after transferring at Union Station, I took the subway to the Hollywood/Western stop and ate at Jitlada in Thai Town, a restaurant some critics claim is the best Thai restaurant in the country. I haven’t eaten at every Thai restaurant in America, so it’s hard to say. It was, though, some of the best Thai food I’ve ever eaten (disclosure: I’ve never been to Thailand). After that, I got back on the subway and headed downtown to the Los Angeles Times Travel Show where I watched Andrew McCarthy give an inspiring talk about why we should check our fear at the door when we hit the road and got to chat with friend Jen Leo and fellow Gadling’er and expert hugger, Don George.

At the end of the day, I hopped back on the Metrolink to Montclair where I was staying with my sister. The sun was setting behind me and I looked out the window at cars slowed and, at times, stopped, in traffic. It was the culmination of what would have been a very un-LA day but I’m happy to say is increasingly more and more Los Angeles with each rider.

[Photo of Union Station by David Farley]