Home from Wisconsin, Leaving Again in Less Than 48 Hours

Wednesday night we got home from our 5-day trip to Wisconsin. In retrospect I could have made it a 3-day trip, leaving Monday. I chose to stay the extra two days, working remotely from a hotel, to space out the travel days and have two extra evenings visiting my sister and her family. The extra family time was nice, though having more time at home would've been nice, too. Especially as we're leaving on our next trip less than 48 hours after returning from this one!

The game of planes, trains, and automobiles on Wednesday wasn't too bad. We drove down from southern Wisconsin to Chicago Midway because we could get a non-stop flight there. I figured the drive plus nonstop was faster than flying with a connection. Though the drive wound up taking close to 2 hours with traffic even though we left just before 2pm aiming to avoid rush-hour traffic, so maybe it was close to a push, time-wise. But there's also a benefit in flying nonstop as there's no risk of a late flight causing a missed connection and potentially an unexpected overnight stay in an airport terminal. ...Yes, that actually happens. It's happened to me twice in the past few years.

Our flight to California did leave late. Southwest even told us it'd be delayed already on Tuesday. Once at the airport the delay shortened, then lengthened, then shortened, then ultimately lengthened. At least the flight was mostly uneventful once it got moving. And we caught some favorable winds on the second half of the flight (I knew from watching the ground speed on the in-flight stats page) so we actually landed a smidge early despite the late departure.

We got home-home, as in walked through our front door, around 9:30pm. It was nice that it wasn't late-late. Though 9:30 felt like 11:30pm to us because of the time zone change. Even so, we stayed up another two hours. We unpacked our bags and ran a load of laundry while winding down for the night. That laundry would come in handy as we started packing Thursday night for our next trip, Friday evening. We're going to Alaska!

Traveling on Points and Cash, June '24 Edition

I'm checking in how I'm using— and not using— my frequent flyer/hotel points for travel in June 2024. As usual, our trips use a mix of points and cash. That's because while points rates are almost always available for bookings in modern airline/hotel programs, they are often poor values for the high number of points required relative to the cash price. Thus I check both rates and do a bit of arbitrage in choosing which currency to pay with, cash or points. (Of course you've got to know what the points are worth to make this arbitrage.)

On our trip to Wisconsin earlier this week:

• I booked our hotel room with Marriott points. Cash prices weren't that high, as there was a discount for a 5 night stay. But there's also a points discount for a 5 night stay: pay points for 4 nights, get the 5th night free. It's a standard Marriott policy. That helped the points rate beat out the cash price.


• For our flights on Southwest Airlines, the cash-vs-points tradeoff was also close to being equal. The numbers tipping slightly in favor of cash on the way out and points on the way home, so I booked it as a split itinerary.


• The Avis rental car I paid cash for. I wish there were a decent way to use points on rental cars since they've gotten so pricey— even with the worst of the post-pandemic price surge past us, rental cars are still routinely double what they cost in early 2020— but the rental car loyalty programs have all gone to shit so it's not worth chasing the points.

On our trip to Alaska this weekend and into next week:

• I booked tonight's hotel in Anchorage with Hilton points. Cash and points rates were all absurdly high, so as a matter of arbitrage I decided I'd rather get gouged for points than hard cash.


• For the remainder of the trip there are no chain hotels in the small town where we're staying, so there's no choice but to pay cash there.


• For our flights on United, I found a great points rate on the way home, so I booked those tickets with points. On the way out tonight, cash prices were high and points prices were absurd so (arbitrage again) I picked cash. But paying cash made us eligible for an upgrade— and we've already been upgraded for our flight tonight. We're looking forward to relaxing in first class on tonight's flight from San Francisco to Anchorage.


• Rental cars in Alaska are even stupid-er expensive than elsewhere, but there continued to be no reasonable points alternative that I see, so stupid-er amounts of cash it is. Alaska's too big to uber around.

Driving the Jeep Grand Cherokee L

On our recent 5-day trip to Wisconsin our rental car was a Jeep Grand Cherokee L. The "L" stands for long, as it's stretched nearly 11 inches from the standard Grand Cherokee. The extra space is used to wedge in a third row of seating in the back.

We drove the JGC-L a few hundred miles in both city and highway traffic on this trip. As I drove it I thought about it compared to other cars I've driven recently, including the shorter-wheelbase, non-L Jeep Grand Cherokee I rented last November.



First Impressions: My first impression was, "This thing is a boat." There's no way to ignore its size. The long, flat hood sticks out in front and it's like staring across a bed from the foot of the mattress to see what's in front of the car.

My second first impression was frustration at the flaky Apple CarPlay connection. It mysteriously dropped the connection to my iPhone while I was using CarPlay to navigate through downtown Chicago traffic on Friday night. And then it failed on multiple tries to reconnect. Fortunately I had a lot of the route in my head so I wasn't lost without it... though I did seriously consider pulling over to the side of the road and parking the damn vehicle to wrestle with its stupid menus so I could get the nav back. The system did reconnect to my phone after about 10 minutes and at least 7 tries. After that it was fairly stable for the rest of the 5 day trip, so I'm not sure what the issue was.

Performance: As with the previous-generation JGC I rented last November, performance of this newer JGC-L is best described as "Nothing surprising." The base 3.6-L V6 engine delivers adequate power for the vehicle to get out of its own way. I never felt like a lack of power left me in a dangerous situation, whether accelerating to merge into highway traffic or to squirt through a gap in city traffic.

Electronics. You really can't rate a vehicle anymore without giving significant consideration to its digital systems, as these impact everything from primary controls to entertainment to comfort and safety. The JGC-L is frankly a mess when it comes to electronics. The standard Apple CarPlay was annoyingly flaky, leading to me almost wanting to pull the car over in heavy traffic to get it working. In addition the digital dashboard controls were overly fussy. There were way too many configuration options to be able to hop in the car and say, "Okay, I want to drive, show me the critical info." And trying to find the critical info one time led down a blind alley where the car switched into manual-transmission-shifting mode. I had to guess at how to use the controls to switch out of that. And as is increasingly common in newer vehicles, too many comfort features like climate control route through on-screen controls.

The third row. A car with three rows of seating is something I doubt I'd ever buy. We don't need the space, and dealing with the size of the car required to accommodate it is something we really don't need. Plus, these third row seats are almost always useless to all but adolescents— kids big enough not to need car seats and small enough not to be adult sized yet. That said we found the third row surprisingly useful. On the day we took a trip out to Lake Geneva with my sister, her husband, and their daughter, the five of us fit in the car well. My sister and her 5'11" daughter both fit in the third row seats (they wanted to sit together). Plus, my 6'5" brother-in-law fit comfortably in the second row. One caveat to using the third row is that it leaves very little luggage space. This isn't a vehicle you'd want to use to take 6 people on a long trip... or even on a ride to the airport.

Comfort. As with performance the keywords here are "Nothing surprising". The front seats were comfortable but nothing special. The vehicle overall was comfortable to drive, but nothing special. I note that it didn't have some of the nice creature-comfort options of the JGC we rented in November, such as seat heaters and a heated steering wheel. This was a base-model vehicle, and while it was overall comfortable it felt very... basic.

About the size.... While the car's mattress-like hood was a galling reminder of its size every time I climbed behind the wheel, the overall size rarely felt like a hindrance to driving and parking. Partly that was due to us spending most of our time in the large-car-friendly suburban Midwest. With roads and parking lots sized for people tooling around in their lifted Ford F-250s this vehicle felt almost svelte.

Bottom line: The JGC-L is not a vehicle I'd ever see myself buying. I'm just not the target market. I don't need the space and I don't like the size. Plus, the fidgety electronics really turn me off. Even for a rental car, if I needed a vehicle able to transport 5+ people— or even 4 with lots of luggage— I'd prefer a minivan. What about the offroad capability, you might ask. Well, in this stretched and bloated Jeep it wasn't obvious there's much offroad capability.