We left the Roswell Trailer Village RV Park at our usual leisurely hour of 11 AM and headed into the north part of town to restock supplies and fill up on diesel and generator gas.  As we had built up a bag of donation clothing and other items, we took the opportunity to drop that off at a conveniently located Goodwill along the way.  Remember the ABC rule?  Always Be Clearing Out and “one in, one out.”  We bought a couple of clothing items in our continuing effort to fill in some wardrobe gaps, but we left far more than we took.

We were headed towards the Petrified Forest National Park across the Arizona border to the northwest, but since that entailed a 384 mile journey through several mountain ranges, far more than I like to do in one day, we researched options for a half way, one night stopping point.  I looked for possible spots in the Cibola National Forest before remembering that Wheeling It spends a lot of time in this section of the country and always manages to find great low-cost or free spots.  A quick check of their site revealed a jaunt along our exact route with a stay over at Datil Well, a Bureau of Land Management campground just a bit further along our route than I had planned, but at $5 a night and with a solid review from an established and experienced full-time RV blogger, we had to take it.  Due to our late departure from Roswell, we were unable to completely follow in Wheeling It’s tracks by stopping at the Very Large Array along the way, but we nodded sagely at it as we passed.

Datil Well is half a mile up a firm packed dirt road just off highway 60 a mile or so north of the small town of Datil, NM.  Shortly before we arrived an SUV pulling one of those cute, retro-styled, tear drop-shaped Tab trailers passed us on the highway, and as we pulled into Datil Well we spotted them setting up camp.  We were the only two rigs in this campground with 25 sites.  We picked one of the larger, mostly level spots, #8, made payment via the honor system envelope at the front of the camp, and settled in for what we thought would be a one night stay.

There are no hook ups at all, just a nice site in a beautiful, juniper dominated mountain forest. The campground has clean pit toilets, and each site has a table, fire ring, and grill.   After getting our little Honda generator going, we met the Tab trailer owners, Craig and Mary from Iowa, who were kind enough to give us a tour of their remarkable little trailer.  We reciprocated and ended up trading stories and jokes for an hour or two in the Big Kahuna.

After a near freezing night we slept in to our usual hour, finally rousing ourselves with full intention of breaking camp and heading towards the next adventure.  But damn!  This place looked so beautiful, and we had it all to ourselves!  Which brings us to one of the greatest advantages of full-time RVing: you can change the plan any time you want.  So we did.  I mean, really now:  we had only been in this marvelous campground for 17 hours, we had not gotten to explore any of the hiking trails, and the Petrified Forest, after 225 million years, had firmly demonstrated that it wasn’t going anywhere.

So we settled back, cooked a brunch, prepped our day pack, and took a 3.3 mile hike along the mountain trails and beautiful, 6800 foot elevation overlooks.   As evening approached we got a fire going in the pit, roasted hot dogs, and hit the hay early so we could defy our usual pattern and get down the road earlier than our typical, nearly noon start time.

Since leaving Odessa we have pushed forward pretty hard: two days without water hook ups in Balmorhea sledding the sand dunes, one day drycamped in the Guadalupe Mountains to hike the Devil’s Hall trail, and a half day parked in the visitor center lot in Carlsbad for cavern hiking.  Simply put, we were tired and needed to stop for preferably three days of recharge, in every respect: we needed full hook ups to get our batteries, water tanks, and black water tank charged, topped off, and emptied, respectively.  We were way behind on laundry and needed to catch up on this blog as well, but on a more basic level, we just wanted to settle for a couple of days after a very fun but hectic schedule.

While we normally prefer nature to cities and towns, if it is a particularly interesting “people place” then we can certainly be lured in.  Since our next major destination was generally north-west, and the famous town of Roswell was only 90 miles or so north, it fit the bill perfectly.  We checked the RV reviews and our favorite bloggers for park recommendations.  If we possessed a tow vehicle we likely would have opted for one of the state parks on the outskirts of town, but lacking a tow we needed something close to the action within bicycle or walking distance.  We called our tentative top choice, learned they were completely full, then called Trailer Village RV Park and got one of their last available openings.

The park is clean, well maintained, nicely decorated and landscaped (allowing for the general browness of New mexico in winter) fully equipped for 50 amp service, has inclusively priced cable and WiFi (very good by RV park standards), with coin laundry rooms available.  The no-nonsense co-owner, Debbie, checked us in, gave us the run down on the park, secured our 10% military discount (also honored for Good Sam members, must pay cash to receive this discount) and got us situated in short order.  After discussions with several of the longer term park residents, we feel we lucked in to the right park.  One of the other options has theft and security issues, and our other top choice was described as an empty lot behind someone’s house, regardless of how good their customer service reviews are.  Besides, Trailer Village RV Park is the closest to downtown Roswell: 1.4 miles.  Bottom line: if heading to Roswell, don’t let the somewhat typical and uninspired name fool you, this is the best bet for a full hook up park in town.

Best of all, Trailer Village had three other rigs from RVillage.com present, our first ever encounter with people for that group after several near misses in Florida.  RVillage is sort of a Facebook for RVers, but without the drama and predatory data mining.  You register, check in to campgrounds, see who else is present, send them a message to plan a get together, etc.  Best of all, when headed for a destination you can see who is already there and ask questions in advance.  Thus we met Janet and Randy, Janice and John, and Mike.  We got together for drinks and fantastic appetizers (thanks Mike, that coconut-pineapple-habanero jam was indescribable) which, under the influence of four bottles of wine, morphed into a full meal when Randy pulled out what I can only describe as the least healthy yet utterly delicious thing we have had in months: a pork loin inside a hollowed out baguette, with the whole thing wrapped in bacon.  He cooked it on his Green Egg, and in tandem with my step dad’s strong recommendation, has us pretty much convinced that we need to get one of the smaller versions of this remarkable device.

The Roswell contingent at an unofficial RVillage.com rally

There was also this nearby town with a UFO fetish.  We spend most of our second day in the heart of UFO mania.  Pretty much every small business and even many of the chains push the alien thing hard in their street front advertising.  It makes for an entertaining photo opportunity from nearly every corner. We got so wrapped up in it that we nearly missed our opportunity to visit the International UFO Museum.  Because we arrived only half an hour before closing they let us in for half price ($2.50 vice $5 each).  Yes, I’m deeply skeptical, but it was a fun and interesting to tour.  My only criticism is that they need to update the displays; some of them appear to have stagnated in 1975 or so.

The aliens are EVERYWHERE in downtown Roswell

Three days is sort of the sweet spot for us in terms of length of stay at parks, though as many longer term full time RVers mention, everyone tends to slow down their pace as time goes on and you get beyond the “OMG I must see everything right now” early phase.   Next year a week my be the prefered stop length.  But after three days in Roswell we were eager to get back on the road towards the Petrified Forest, Sedona, and Grand Canyon. 

One of these things is not like the others, one of these things, doesn’t belong.

I had grand plans: Wake up at 6 AM (an ungodly hour for any self-respecting retiree) and head out of Guadalupe Mountains National Park, turn south for two miles to hit the scenic overlooks of El Capitan, find three or four geocaches along the way, and then turn back north to meet our 8 AM appointment at the Carlsbad RV Repair Center to address a couple of water leaks.  Rosie did not object as she planned to stay in bed during the entire scheme of manuever.  What I failed to take into account was the sunrise time; at 6 AM it was still pitch black, and I don’t like to drive The Big Kahuna in the dark, much less try to geocache by flashlight or sight see without, er, sight.

So I reset the alarm for 6:40, which turned out to be perfect for a dawn start with sufficient light to both see El Capitan and find at least one geocache before we headed towards Carlsbad.  We arrived at the repair center precisely at 8, they immediately lead us into a bay, Rosie and I walked down the road to a diner for breakfast, and by the time we returned they were already buttoning things back up after repairing the two fitting cracks we knew of plus a cracked toilet valve that we did not.  We have had experience with six different repair organizations since buying the bus, and this was in the top two for fast, fair, and painless service.

Shortly after 10 we were back on the road for the short trip back to the Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  The seven mile entry road is a twisty winding pleasure for the passenger and not too difficult of an experience for the driver.  The visitor center has ample bus and RV parking, though part of the lanes are not particularly level and unless you have an excessive amount of faith in your parking brake, wheel chocks are recommended to prevent catastrophe.  I used two big rocks.

We checked into the visitor center and learned that as it is Spring Break season all of the guided tours are filled up days in advance, but we preferred a self guided tour in any case, particularly since they had a portable audio guide to rent for $5.  We used our National Park Annual Pass for free entry to the cavern itself, which if anyone is keeping track has now covered $50 of it’s $80 cost ($20 at Big Bend, $10 at Guadalupe Mountains, and $20 at Carlsbad).  We were a bit concerned about the number of people in the park, particularly the busses full of children, but the park does a great job of spreading everyone out, and since we did the longer tour starting at the natural entrance, we did not find the crowd disconcerting at all. 

We did the slightly more than a mile hike from the cave entrance down to the primary viewing areas, another 1.2 mile circuit of the “Big Room,” and then took the elevator 750 feet back to the surface.  It is difficult to explain just how overwhelmingly enormous this cavern is.  We visited Florida Caverns State Park earlier this year, and it was nice.  It was interesting and fun.  But to compare that cavern to Carlsbad is to compare a children’s flag football game to the Super Bowl.  Sure, you might enjoy them both, but let’s be serious about which one is the national wonder and which one is merely interesting.

The tour was longer and more energy consuming than we had anticipated, and thus we were ravenous enough to pay the extortionist prices at the visitor center cafeteria once we emerged topside.  The gift shop and separate library gift shop were pretty big compared to our previous national park shops, and we snagged my park patch and some post cards.

One of the key lessons from Carlsbad is that not all national parks are equal in terms of appropriate time to spend in them.  We had sort of gotten used to the idea that in very general terms, state parks are small, i.e., you can often see the high points by bicycle in one or two days, and national parks are huge, i.e., you can’t expect to see but a fraction of their wonders in less than three days and that with a vehicle. So we had roughly penned in three days for any national park we planned to visit.  This just isn’t necessary for Carlsbad.  Unless you want to do the cavern tour multiple times or can arrange a tour of some of the other caverns in the area, you can do Carlsbad’s main attraction in half a day, particularly since this is one of the national parks that does not have any overnight RV camping available within the park itself.  Once all of this became apparent we cancelled our plans to stay at the nearest private RV park and left right after our post hike meal, heading up the road to Roswell.  Since that visit we have taken a harder look at a few other planned stops, such that the soon to be visited Petrified Forest National Park, which will now be a one night stop vice three.  

After leaving Monahans Sandhills State Park, we headed towards our last Texas stop; a one night stay in Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  We would learn that one night here is simply not enough, but this visit was a compromise: we were eager to get out of Texas and on to other states since we had spent much more time than we anticipated there, but Guadalupe is one of our 59 national parks and it was directly on the way to our next planned destination.

The unrelenting brown flats and mild hills gave way rather suddenly to a jutting mountain range as we approached Guadalupe. The RV site is just a parking lot with no hook ups, but it does have a bathhouse and potable water available, and generators may be used from 8 AM to 8 PM.  The views are amazing, and we took advantage of our one day here to hike one of the trails accessible right from the RV lot.  

The ranger at the visitor center recommended we do Devil’s Hall since we only had about half a day once we finished setting up our site.  The terrain is similar to Big Bend, but with more sheer cliffs and general ruggedness.  Unlike our seven mile hike in Big Bend, this time we prepared with full meal and took a day pack.  The four mile jaunt through dirty paths and very rocky dry washes was fantastic, especially the culmination at the devils stairs and hall.

If we had more time we would have taken on some of the other, longer trails, particularly to the top of Guadalupe to look down on El Capitan.  Unfortunately we had an appointment in Carlsbad early the next morning to address a couple of water leaks in The Big Kahuna.  I suspect Guadalupe Mountains National Park is overlooked by a lot of visitors to the region that are headed straight for the Carlsbad Caverns just across the New Mexico border.  We would recommend a stop in Guadalupe to anyone passing through.

We gotta get out of this place!  If it’s the last thing we ever do …

– The Animals

Due to the unfortunate chair staining incident, we did not escape from our mechanically induced 11 day stay in Odessa, TX until nearly 5 PM this last Monday.  Such a late departure squashed our tentative plans to head to Balmorhea State Park, but there was no way in hell we were spending another night in Odessa, so we executed our back up plan and headed 40 miles down the road to Monahans Sandhills State Park, the closest state park generally on the route towards Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns National Parks.  We stuck with a Texas State Park since the are very affordable, $15 a night at Monahans, and the annual pass we purchased in Galveston would eliminate the $4 per person entry fee and give us the second night in the campground at half price.

We arrived after the ranger station and visitor center had closed, but as we had called ahead we knew to pull into any open site that was not posted on the reserved list at the entrance and make payment the next morning when they opened.  We hooked up power and water… and almost immediately learned that I had not adequately winterized The Big Kahuna for the nearly week long freeze he experienced in the Odessa repair lot.  Before we departed on our full-time journey we had nearly the entire potable water system replaced with flexible PEX piping, but a handful of the old PVC joints were still in the system, and they did not withstand the pressure of expanding frozen water.  

I encountered the first major water leak in the complex PVC joint at the water connection; it was cracked to the point that we could not get much water into the potable system. Unable to hook up a pressurized water source, I used an alternate connection to fill our water storage tank with the intention of using the electic pump to provide water to the bus. Unfortunately, as soon as I turned on the water pump I discovered a second crack in an elbow joint between the PEX tubing and the hard metal piping leading up to the faucets in the bus.  Thus we had to spend our stay in Monahans washing dishes at the outdoor faucet and filling jugs for drinking and flushing water, but we at least had the park showers available.

Monahan Sands is a 3800 acre park with extensive and massive sand dunes rising up to 80 feet tall.  They are the primary draw for the park; Texans and other people without access to snow can come here and actually sled down the dunes.  We bought a plastic toboggan from the visitor center and spent part of the afternoon laboriously climbing these over sized sand hills and sliding down at frightening speeds.  Fun for an afternoon, but until they install some sky slope style lifts, this is likely to be our only visit to Texas dune country.

We live in an 8’x35′ little house on wheels with much of that room taken up by a big honking engine and the driver’s area.  Though the lack of living space is partially offset by typical RV design, in that every piece of furniture has storage compartments, it is still imperative to maintain a “reduce and clear out” mindset lest we become overcrowded by “stuff.”  We did a pretty good job of cutting our possessions down to something close to minimalist before we moved into the motorhome, but our underbelly storage is rather crammed, the is closet nearly full, and all those aforementioned furniture cubby holes are mostly occupied.

Accordingly, we have continued our reduction efforts. Since moving in, I guesstimate that we have cleared out about 10 cubic feet of items, mostly by selling them off: half a dozen eBay items and two 30 pound propane canisters sold at RV parks.  We gave away a two gallon sports cooler to the park host at Amistad, and have a large plastic shopping bag of items waiting to drop off at the next Goodwill or Salvation Army spot.

We are also trying to use a “one in, one out” rule: If we buy a thing, something else has to go away.  During our recent enforced stay in Odessa, TX we went on a bit of a shopping spree to fill in our winter clothes and footwear gaps.  I took home two pair of shoes, two shirts, two pants, a windbreaker, and gloves.  So I got rid of three pair of shoes, two shorts, two shirts, one hat, and a pair of old gloves.  Last month we bought a stackable set of RV/Yacht type induction ready pots and pans, and now we have the remnants of our old non-stackable, non-induction ready pans on eBay.  Today we went “sand sledding” at Monihans Sandhills State park, and rather than rent two little sleds for $10, we bought the two-person toboggan for $12.50, and when we were done for the day we sold it to a young man for $5.   No net increase in items.

Though we half expected to hear about another delay, 5 Star Diesel came through for us today with a repaired and road ready Big Kahuna.  We caught a shuttle from the hotel out to the repair facility, and went through the transmission and other issues with our main mechanic, Cory.  The transmission shifts smoothly not only between reverse and forward, but our long-standing top gear problem appears resolved as well.  The ludicrously expensive solenoid relay assembly replacement also resolved a significant compressed air leak, allowing us to come up on air a lot faster than pre-break down.

They did tell us to keep an eye on the oil pressure as by their experience it is sitting at the lower end of the acceptable range, and if we find an old Detroit Diesel specialist we should ask about getting the two oil pressure regulators tweaked to give us a bit more pressure. The overall bill for the entire venture was… expensive, pushing us noticeably below the 50% point of what we set aside as reserve for bus repairs and renovations.

Though we weren’t happy about the bill, which included 40 hours of labor, we at least generally accept that it took them a lot or work to troubleshoot, manufacture special parts, and repair the bus.  What we can’t accept is their cleanliness standards when it comes to the treatment of client’s vehicles.  Perhaps this is the added risk of getting work done at a big rig truck specialist rather than an RV repair shop, but the first thing we noticed upon climbing into The Big Kahuna was a grime, grease and oil covered passenger seat, with additional stains on the driver chair and armrest.  Seriously, how hard would it have been to prevent this?  Two sheets covering the seats?  Look, these may not be our favorite chairs or colors, and yes we intend to replace or recover them eventually, but seriously? We got the front office involved and they did the right thing, immediately contacting a specialist mobile upholstery cleaner.  These guys:

So Joe and his partner from Advance Cleaning arrived within 20 minutes, but expressed skepticism about the their ability to clean such a thick amount of what was likely oil and grease based grime from this type of material. They set to work, however, and in about an hours time had restored the chair merely to pre-break down color, but to my eye it now looks even cleaner than the other, unstained chair of this pair.  So big ups to Advance Cleaning of Odessa, TX, we will be Yelping and Google reviewing you as soon as we can.

Since we did not get out of Odessa until after 5 PM, we elected to stop at Monahans Sandhills State Park, less than 40 miles west of Odessa, rather than push on to Balmorhea State Park or Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  We will assess in the morning how to proceed, as we have discovered two cracks in our potable water piping that will need fixing before we go much further.  Though we drained the water tank and system prior to getting towed from Big Bend National Park, the bus piping has a lot of dips and bends and I don’t think we got all the water out of the lines before we had nearly a week of sub-freezing temps in Odessa.  I have not decided if this is something I want to repair myself, have a mobile RV guy come out and fix, or swing into an RV shop in Pecos, the next town on our general route.

Two days ago we posted our hope that The Big Kahuna would be ready for the road in a day, possibly two.  That hope proved, as we secretly suspected, overly optimistic.  This morning, even as we waited for our taxi to arrive and take us to 5 Star Diesel, the service manager called to report continuing transmission problems.  Though they had road tested everything on Friday and all looked positive, further testing resulted in ongoing transmission sticking when shifting between reverse and forward gears.  So as of now they have accomplished the following:

• Repaired/adjusted throttle linkage (original problem that got us towed here)
• Replaced both drive shaft u-joints (pointed out by wrecker driver)
• Replaced solenoid switch assembly with manufactured new one (long-standing problem, also aggravating our compressed air leak problems)
• Replaced oil pressure sender (old one was sending incorrect oil pressure to gauge and alarm)
• Changed transmission fluid (still tracking down the actual leak)

So… we are still in Odessa, and as a minimum we will be here another two days, though or concern is that it will be even longer.   As such we are redoubling our efforts to make the best of it, if that makes sense.  During our first week in Odessa, though we scored a great deal on an equipped suite, we didn’t really accomplish much other than catch up on this blog and do some laundry.  I guess we had not really accepted and committed to our stay; it might not have been real to us as we kept thinking we would be out tomorrow, and then tomorrow, and then tomorrow.

We are trying to make up for that a bit now. We can at least do two things here that some people, those of an unnecessarily critical mindset, those without the perspective to see what is important to us, well, those people might say these things are frivolous, even counter productive. Nay I say!  Nay!  These things are important!:

1. Filling in our one dimensional, Miami-oriented wardrobe, one that is abysmally unsuited for anything other than very warm weather.  Additionally, my footwear consists of flip flops, dress and semi-casual shoes, and one ragged pair of Saucany running shoes with holes spreading in multiple spots.  Totally unsuitable for hiking and other rugged outdoors activities.  So we have been hitting the discount clothing stores and sales racks to fill in our sartorial gaps, particularly those that will get us in a more rugged, boondocking mindset.  Yes, I know, the less enlightened will simply call this “spending money because they are bored” but that is just not true! We need these things!  Plus we managed to keep the whole two day spree under $275.
2. Catching up on TV shows that we have missed during the last few months. Without cable or high speed unlimited data internet we have missed the new seasons of Justified, Downton Abbey, Archer, Walking Dead, The Americans, House of Cards, and probably a few others.  Again, the less expansive, the more judgemental among you might dismiss such things as trivial, even frivolous, but as we mentioned as far back as December 2013, we are TV people, believing that we live in the golden age of quality television shows.  Besides, we fully anticipated being hooked up with satellite TV by now.  Sure, we convinced ourselves that we didn’t really miss it, but every time we would run across an ad for one of our shows we would cringe a bit inside.  We may have saved three months worth of satellite costs, but there was a tv sized hole in our souls.  So now we playing catching up, starting with Walking Dead.

We will see where we stand on Monday, hopefully back on the road and on the way to various phenomenal national parks.  Until then we will hang tight here in whatever affordable, military discounted, breakfast and WiFi included, cable TV providing hotel we can find.

We have a somewhat more positive report from 5 Star Diesel Repair today.  They were hampered by the sub freezing temperatures during the last week and did not really make much progress until Monday.  Since then they have troubleshot and repaired the throttle linkage problem and replaced both driveshaft u-joints.  Yesterday they confirmed that the solenoid activation assembly for the transmission is shot, or as the service manager explained: “tits up in the rhubarb.”  Once again, pardon the technical speak. Unfortunately this solenoid proved very difficult to source, so they had a local shop manufacture it, which involved hours of work on aluminum billet, wiring, compression line fitting, etc.  That translates into mucho dinero, but we don’t have a lot of choice at this point, and it has been a long-standing problem that needed addressing.

If all goes well, they will have it installed tomorrow morning, which will then allow them to road test and see if it actually fixed the reverse gear sticking problem and maybe even the top gear problem.  Fingers crossed.

As of this morning we have exhausted our Marriott points at the Residence Inn, but considering everything that was included we got a great deal of value from those points.  With Marriott reward points the fifth night of a five-day stay is free , plus WiFi, breakfast, and half of our dinners were included in the relatively low cost.  All good things come to an end, and this afternoon we had to switch to a TownPlace, also a Marriott property, since they had an excellent military rate that could not be matched by the other chain properties. Because of the oil boom of the last half decade, Odessa is way short on housing and hotels, and they are surprisingly expensive here.  Fortunately our dedication to loyalty programs saved the day.

NB: Some financial advisors (cough Suze Orman cough) would not approve of some of the vaguely controversial money related recommendations below.

A little over three years ago, when I wrote for a group blog oriented on politics and culture, I posted an article equating the extraordinary benefits of airline, hotel, and other loyalty programs to the rather esoteric field of online roleplaying computer game structure.  Don’t think about that too hard, please. The point was to demonstrate the benefits one could get from the loyalty programs and to convince people to consider using some of the well established tips and tricks to gain maximum rewards.

Our recent forced stop in Odessa, TX necessitated a hotel, which I obtained using a portion of the rather large cache of hotel points built up during the years of my extensive business related travel. Specifically, six nights in a Residence Inn, normally $119 per night, which I got for 10,000 Marriott points (valued at maybe $80) per night.  This week we also “purchased ” business class airline tickets to Hawaii using some of the American Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines points from the same cache.  We could do this because for the decade between 2004 and 2014 I was flying international at least half a dozen times a year, some years twice that, with associated hotel stays, on the government dime.  With that pace of travel it was complicated but very much worth it to remain a bit obsessive about working the marginal lines of the airline and hotel loyalty programs.

Now that I am retired and my flights and hotel stays are much more limited, it’s is not so critical to stay on the edge of the programs, and the core principles that served me so well then are not nearly so critical:

1. Never fly in a plane, sleep in a hotel, or rent a car without signing up for and getting credit in the associated loyalty program.
2. When feasible concentrate your flying, sleeping, and renting into a primary company and a back up. This will entail a bit of research to determine which programs best meet your travel patterns, and where your value vs. loyalty cut off point is.
3. Utilize the incredible variety of free offers out there to build miles and points in your primary and back up programs. E.g, some insurance companies give points just for allowing them to give you a quote.  Most airlines have dining rewards programs where all you do is register your credit cards, and if you eat at a partner restaurant, you get extra reward points.  Two examples among hundreds.

Though I still generally follow them, without the frequent business travel there is not nearly so much of a benefit behind these principles, especially the second.  There are, however, two additional principles, techniques that provide the same advantages now that I am retired as when I was working, though they are not for everyone:

Use reward program credit cards for every conceivable purchase, including recurring bills that allow it, such as utilities, cell phone, car insurance, etc., and align specific spending to the credit card offering the greatest reward return in that category.

We have all seen the plethora of credit card commercials offering some percentage back in cash or points for your spending (“What’s In Your Wallet?”)  I use cash for almost nothing, and thus earn tens of thousands of loyalty points just for paying my bills and buying necessities. Financial advisors, at least those focused on advising struggling people how to clear debt and get themselves on a stable financial track, do not merely balk at such a proposal, they may even make getting rid of credit cards one of their core and mandatory steps.  Dave Ramsey comes to mind.  And he is not wrong.  Until you have firmly established as habit the paying off of monthly balances before the due date and treat the credit card as if it were cash, i.e., you don’t use the existence of the credit card and its bonuses as an excuse to buy something you otherwise would not, then you should be wary of making credit cards your primary spending method.

Circa 2004, this was not me.  Before Rose and I got married I was pretty happy-go-lucky with the spending and bill payments.  This drove Rose insane.  Once I got her out of the ward, I improved my bill payment process and locked it down such that I have not paid interest or a late payment in years. After several years of clear bill payments, sometime in late 2010 I made the full on switch to credit cards for everything, and not just the traditional store spending and automatic bill payments: I bought a used car on my MasterCard, paid part of my son’s college classes on it, every possible thing unless they charged an additional fee for using the card.

The additional element of this method is to take advantage of the category bonuses many cards offer. My Chase Ink Business Visa gives 5% back for telecommunications (cell and cable bills) and office supplies.  My AmEx Simply Cash offers 3% back on gas.  Chase Freedom and Discover It have a quarterly rotating set of 5% bonus categories.  Does this sound too hard to track?  I carry five cards, and keep the categories straight by writing directly onto each card in white correction fluid, covered by clear tape, for which categories I should use them.  This process has paid off handsomely, though not nearly as much as the next technique.

“Churn” the reward point credit cards, but again, only if you have established a pattern of paying off the balance due every month and are strongly committed to doing so in the future.  

Though most credit card television commercials tout the spending cash back bonuses, the real money is in the sign up bonuses.  You have probably thrown away hundreds of such offers on flyers in your mailbox.  Citibank, American Express, Chase, Barclay, Bank of America, they all sponsor credit cards, often in partnership with specific airlines or hotels, that will grant you tens of thousands of “reward points” or “miles” or whatever their preferred currency terminology allows, just for getting the card and meeting a reasonable minimum spend, usually around $3,000 in the first three months after activation, though some require as little as $500 or even just a single purchase.

Since 2010 I have applied for and received 1 million airline/hotel points (estimated value $15,000) plus $650 in cash bonuses from 25 credit cards, the overwhelming majority of which involved no annual fee or waived it for the first year.  Along the way I have cancelled 18 of them, usually a month or two before the annual membership fee was due. The remaining seven either have no annual fee, are still a few months away from the need to cancel, or they provide some intrinsic benefit that warrants retention despite a modest annual fee.   Some examples:

• In 2011 I applied for two Citi American Airlines cards, an AX and a Visa, that provided me 75K AAdvantage miles each after spending about $3,000 on each card. Those $150K points can get me six domestic round trip tickets in coach, or just under two first class transcontinental international flights.  They cost me nothing.
• In 2014 I received a targeted mail flyer offer for a $300 statement credit on a no annual fee American Express Simply Cash card.  That turns out to be worth… $300.
• In 2013 I applied for a Chase Marriott rewards card, granting me 70K in Marriott points, 60K of which have paid for our stay in Odessa.
• Between 2012 and 2014 I obtained three different credit cards granting a combined $105K in Hawaiian Airlines points, which just paid for my wife’s business class ticket to Hawaii with plenty of points left over.

So what’s the catch?  What is the business model that incentivizes the large banks to offer such rewards?  They count on two things:

1. A significant percentage of applicants will not pay off their bill every month, resulting in interest charges.
2. A significant percentage of the applicants will never use their acquired points, or will use them on something that is of limited value to the holder and almost no cost to the credit company. E.g., magazine subscriptions.

We pay the bill every month, and we use those points for upgraded international and trans-ocean flights and upgraded stays in high end resort hotels.  Sometimes it really is that simple.  It’s not a scam or a get rich scheme; it’s simply financially responsible people using, to maximum effect, the legitimate offers proffered from large corporate banking organizations and their corporate hotel and airline partners.

I know what some of you are thinking: But what about your credit score?  Doesn’t applying for, much less receiving, half a dozen credit cards a year damage your rating?  Short answer: Not really.  Longer answer: The proprietary credit score calculations from the three major credit ranking organizations are complicated, but they all boil down to a couple of overwhelming considerations: Do you pay your bills on time and do you have a high ratio of unused credit to debt?  There are a few other factors, such as average age of active accounts and, yes, number of credit applications within the last year, but if you have been paying your bills regularly for three years running with no major delinquencies, and you have a lot more available credit line than actual debt, then the very minor and temporary ding of a few credit applications will barely register.  In fact, if you receive several credit cards, all with multi-thousand dollar limits and a starting balance of zero, you have likely offset the temporary application hit because you significantly increased your unused credit ratio.

So for the last four and a half years I have “churned” the loyalty point and cash rewarding credit cards: applying for, receiving, meeting minimum spend, receiving the bonus, paying off, and then cancelling about six credit cards a year. Outrageous? I know churners who do 15 to 20 cards a year.  I consult the numerous loyalty program bloggers before applying, such as Million Mile Secrets or The Points Guy.  I am selective.  A $50 dollar or 10K point sign up bonus doesn’t get a second thought; with few exceptions, if the offer isn’t worth at least $150 in equivalent point value, I usually dismiss it.

This weekend, as I had to expend some of our points cache for the Odessa hotel and our Hawaii tickets, I was reminded that it had been six months since my last credit card churn. Accordingly, I researched and then applied online for a carefully selected set of six cards. I was approved for two, denied one, and three gave me an automated “needs further review” type response.  As this was not my first churning rodeo, I immediately called the reconsideration line for each pending and denied card, resolving the three penders with some additional information or paperwork.  It turns out that the My RV Mail forwarding address we established can play havoc with the automated address confirmation algorithms of the credit agencies.

The one denied card was part of Citi’s tightened criteria, in that I applied for two personal cards from them at the same time, and they only allow one at a time.  Had one of them been a business card, it likely would not have been a problem.  And so despite a vastly reduced annual income since I retired, which I did not fudge on the applications, I still received five of six applied for cards, worth 185K loyalty points and two free nights in Hyatt hotels.  I call that a bargain, though not the best I ever had.

I think this is a worthwhile regular series for ShellOnWheels.  As new full-time RVers, we don’t bring much of anything new to the RV blogger community, but the loyalty point game is something I worked aggressively for nearly five years, and that may be rather uncommon among us.  So… got questions?