Thanks for the great advice, everyone.

Sounds like I've got plenty of options with either United or Delta, so I'm just going to build miles and use the best award I can find in the first program that gets me enough miles.

The open-jaw travel would be great - I was already planning to visit Denali and the Alaska Railroad is already one of my bookmarked sites... so the Fairbanks thing would be good.

Got to get out of Tulsa once in awhile - you can only visit the Prayer Tower at Oral Roberts University so many times before the thrill begins to fade...

thanks again for the good information.