Road Trip Stats: Month 55 – July 2022

July was a fairly busy month on our road trip. We finished visiting two more states – Nebraska and Iowa – and, most importantly, Shae completed RAGBRAI – a 462 mile bike ride from one side of Iowa to the other (more about that in a future post).

Heading into July I was hopeful that we might be able to stay under budget as our accommodation spending wasn’t due to be particularly high. However, I knew our gas expenditure might end up being high, while our food and drink spending might also be high.

Here are our stats from July 2022 where we’ll share how far we drove, how much we spent, how many hotel points we earned and redeemed and more.

Miles Driven

We started July with 182,347 miles on our car. By the end of the month our car’s odometer reading was 185,064 which means we drove 2,717 miles in July. I’d predicted last month that we’d drive 1,500 miles, so I was a long way off from being correct. The main reason for the big discrepancy is that I hadn’t taken into account all the driving back and forth I’d be doing during RAGBRAI – oops!

Looking ahead to August, our mileage will be minimal. We’re flew to Europe last night for a month, so we only used our car in the US for the first week of this month. I therefore don’t think we put more than 600 miles on the car this month, although I forgot to check before we left.

Money Spent

Our road trip budget is now $125 per day. With 31 days in July, that gave us a total budget for the month of $3,875. By the end of the month we’d spent $3,993.42 which means we went $118.42 over budget.

It didn’t feel like we had any particularly extravagant spending in July. Instead, we just had a few categories where we spent a little more than average such as eating out, hotel pet fees and gas.

Here’s a breakdown of what we spent our money on…

…and here’s a chart tracking our spending so far this year.

Shae and I have just been discussing how we should calculate our budget for August and September. We’re heading overseas for exactly a month today, so we might combine August and September’s budget as one post based on 30 days of spend when we’re actually in the US rather than trying to pro-rate each month’s spending as that doesn’t result in an accurate representation of all our spending.

Accommodation Cost

Shae riding RAGBRAI meant we moved even more frequently than normal because we had to move hotels every couple of days during that time. We’d already stayed in a few different hotels during July before that, so here’s a list of where we stayed and how much each stay cost us.

July 1-3: Residence Inn Des Moines Downtown, IA. We booked this stay using Marriott Bonvoy points. It was a week-long stay, with July 1-3 being the last couple of days of that stay. The average cost was 14,333 Marriott points per night.

July 3-10: Hyatt Place Iowa City Downtown, IA (see my review here). This was another week-long award stay, this time booked with World of Hyatt points. The first five nights cost 6,500 points per night, the sixth night cost 8,000 points and the final night cost 9,500 points. That means the average cost per night was 7,143 Hyatt points per night.

July 10-20: Homewood Suites Omaha Downtown, NE. This was a stay that we paid cash for. I’d found a cheaper rate for the hotel on Hotels.com, so I booked directly with Hilton and submitted a Price Match Guarantee form. Provided all the details match – same room type, same dates, same cancellation policy, etc. – Hilton matches the price and then deducts another 25% which is what happened with this stay. That reduced our cost to $95.17 per night which was a low price given its location and the fact that it was for a one bedroom suite with a kitchen. That cost was reduced further thanks to an Amex Offer giving a 5% statement credit when paying for Hilton stays, so our net cost was $90.41 per night.

July 20-25: Courtyard Sioux City, IA. We booked this as an award stay because Marriott’s ‘Stay 5, Pay For 4’ feature on award stays meant that we only had to redeem points for four of our five nights. Our net cost when taking into account that benefit was 11,700 Marriott points per night.

July 25-27: Super 8 Emmetsburg, IA. One of the overnight towns during RAGBRAI was Emmetsburg. I managed to book this hotel within an hour or two of the RAGBRAI route being announced, so I was able to lock in a low rate of $79.74 per night.

July 27-29: Holiday Inn Express Northwood, IA. Northwood wasn’t an overnight town, but it was a 30-60 minute drive from two of the overnight towns, so we stayed a couple of nights there. We booked it using IHG One Rewards points which came to 16,000 points per night. I have the IHG Select credit card (no longer available for new applications) which gives a 10% points rebate on award stays, so our net cost was 14,400 points per night. We’d bought those points for 0.5cpp (cents per point) which means we effectively paid $72.20 per night. The cash rate was $144.70 per night, so buying the points saved us 50% on the stay,

July 29-30: Super 8 Oelwien, IA. We were originally due to stay at a different hotel this night, but I noticed that the Super 8 Oelwein was closer to that night’s RAGBRAI overnight town, so I booked it using Wyndham Rewards points. It would normally cost 15,000 points, but I have the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business credit card which offers a 10% rebate on award stays, so our net cost was 13,500 Wyndham points for the night.

July 30-August 1: Country Inn & Suites Dubuque, IA. After Shae completed RAGBRAI, we had a couple of days before we needed to head to Chicago. We wanted to ride the Fenelon Place Elevator in Dubuque as it’s the world’s shortest and steepest funicular, so we booked a couple of nights at the Country Inn & Suites there. This cost us 30,000 Radisson points per night.

Hotel Points Earned

We saw quite a big increase in our points in July, but it’s not as exciting as it initially looks. Our IHG One Rewards points balances were boosted by 500,000 points, but that’s because we purchased them rather than earned that many points. Those points cost us half a cent per point and we can normally redeem the points for at least one cent per point of value, so it made sense buying them cheaply like this.

Here’s a breakdown of all the points we earned in July:

• IHG One Rewards – 547,759
• Hilton Honors – 71,999
• Marriott Bonvoy – 8,655
• World of Hyatt – 4,472
• Radisson Rewards – 30,000
• Choice Privileges – 0
• Wyndham Rewards – 4,502
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 17,590
• Capital One – 0

Hotel Points Redeemed

Although we bought and earned quite a few points in July, we also redeemed quite a few points for upcoming award stays.

• IHG One Rewards – 0
• Hilton Honors – 50,000
• Marriott Bonvoy – 9,000
• World of Hyatt – 50,000
• Radisson Rewards – 0
• Choice Privileges – 0
• Wyndham Rewards – 108,000
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 10
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 0
• Capital One – 0

Total Hotel Points Balances

As a result of those earnings and redemptions, here’s what our points balances amounted to at the end of July:

• IHG One Rewards – 941,657
• Hilton Honors – 1,222,864
• Marriott Bonvoy – 185,727
• World of Hyatt – 87,348
• Radisson Rewards – 73,092
• Choice Privileges – 96,165
• Wyndham Rewards – 38,506
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 0
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 825,183
• Capital One – 296,572

Here’s all that information in table format:

Hotel Free Night Certificates

We redeemed a few Hyatt free night certificates in July, but we earned a couple more. Here’s how many free night certificates we have across hotel programs now:

• IHG (up to 40,000 points per night) – 2
• Hilton (any property worldwide) – 4
• Marriott (up to 35,000 points per night) – 3
• Marriott (up to 40,000 points per night) – 1
• Hyatt (category 1-4) – 3
• Hyatt (category 1-7) – 1

Blog Stats

Due to how busy we were leading up to and during RAGBRAI, we only published 11 blog posts last month. Despite that, our readership increased by about 10% compared to the previous month which was nice to see.

• Number of blog posts published – 11
• Page views – 24,068

Final Thoughts

It’s a little disappointing that we once again went over budget, although at least it wasn’t by a significant amount. With us being overseas for a month during August and September, we probably won’t be publishing a stats post for August at the beginning of September, instead waiting until the beginning of October to publish a joint August/September stats post.