traintrip

Hi All - I would like to plan a solo trip, have 25k AGR points to work with.

I live in Boston, don't mind getting coach seats the whole time (if it means stretching my points). Looking to plan something around July 4th or Xmas holiday (of course considering the blackout rules).

I am thinking glacier national park? Maybe the west coast?

I am pretty flexible (would consider flying home, buying a leg if needed, etc)

What would you do?

amamba

Personally, for me, I can't sleep in coach overnight. So I would do something on a sleeper, perhaps overnight to Chicago or maybe down to Miami. With 25K points you can do a 1 zone (15K pts) or a 2 zone (20K points) roomette redemption.

But since you said you would like to go west and see glacier and don't mind coach, I would absolutely recommend a trip to Glacier! Its a beautiful national park and you can get some good train rides in. I believe you will need to redeem a 2 zone award from BOS - Glacier (someone correct me if its three zones). You should take the LSL direct from BOS to CHI and then connect in CHI to the Empire Builder. I believe its only 1 night on the EB to Glacier.

If you have 25K points and don't mind coach I believe you could do this trip roundtrip with points alone.

If you wanted to get more train time in, you could do something like the LSL to the CZ to the CS and head up to Seattle. That would give you four nights on the train for a 3 zone award. However, that might be a bit long for coach.

I should add that I wouldn't plan on going to Glacier around the christmas holidays. I would only do that in the summer.

rtpflyer

I remembered Glacier National Park being on the zone boundary, but looking at the zone map, it appears to be further East in Montana. That could make a big difference. Anyway, it looks like you have the points to take a 3 zone trip in one direction, and a 1-zone plus 2-zone trip in the other direction if you wanted to stop off at a zone boundary (Denver, for example, or Glacier if it was on the zone boundary like I remembered).

AlanB

Well if you want to do Glacier, here's what I'd do. Buy 5,000 points to get you to 30,000. Now you have enough points for a two-zone, roundtrip in a roomette. Book a two-zone award Boston to Wolf Point, MT. Then buy a coach ticket from there. Reverse things to come home. This would get you most of your meals, plus a sleeper.

If you want to go all the way to the West Coast, then you'd have to rough things in coach, but that would only take 21,000 points to do a round trip.

3Cforme

Goodness, yes. Take a roomette and a friend: the roomette ticket covers passage for two travelers.

gatelouse

There's conflicting information above on how many points are required for a roomette redemption. amamba is right--20k each way for a two-zone roomette, for 40k roundtrip.

All AGR rail awards are one-way awards, so you can mix and match freely.

AlanB

You are quite correct, I have clearly lost my mind on this one. Don't know what I was thinking of when I came up with the following:

That would actually require 40,000 to do a round trip. Sorry!

traintrip

thanks everyone, these are good tips. I hadn't considered combining roomette and coach legs (using a border city).

I get most of my points on the AGR credit card; I will be up to 30,000 pretty soon, opening up the possibilities as well.

If and when I pull the trigger and book something, I will let you know how it all goes!