Growing up me and dad would do a ski trip every couple of years or so. Well our tradition took a hiatus for 6 years but we decided to head to Banff to ski and snowboard Lake Louise Ski Resort and Sunshine Village for our father son trip. In the past we went to the Salt Lake area doing a different ski resort each day and on another trip we went out east to Killington and got a taste of east coast skiing and snowboarding. Banff was by far the most scenic place I have ever snowboarded at and both the ski resorts had some great terrain!

The flights were actually booked many months ago to Calgary. Part of the reason for our decision to go to Banff for skiing was we had nearly perfect flights and were able to book the flights for 25,000 Delta miles round trip each (hey no money for the tickets!). That is cheap in miles too. The flights typically range in the $500 range so this was a great value and the best part was we met up in Minneapolis for our final connecting flight into Calgary and back home.

While we’re still in the midst of summer I have just booked my yearly ski trip and this time I am heading to Banff and Lake Louise up in Canada! The best part is that I was able get my myself and my dad to Calgary (YYC) for nearly free thanks to Delta award miles. While Delta runs a great airline I am not too keen on their frequent flyer program which means I limit my flying on them. For example, Delta has been trimming away their value of their miles for years and now they don’t even publish an award chart anymore… with more devaluation on the way for 2016 it was time to burn the miles I had left with them. In general it is really hard to find saver award space on Delta flights but we lucked out and both roundtrips were only 25k miles for MLK weekend with nearly perfect times (I only had 27k so it worked!). We also ended up on the same flights for both of the legs between Minneapolis (MSP) and Calgary (YYC). Flights to Calgary are usually in the $500 range so this ends being a great redemption of 1.74 cpm after backing out the $65 in taxes, so there can be some value to Delta miles!