Last May, when my childhood friend asked me to photograph to her wedding - to be held in North Island, New Zealand on the famous Lord of the Rings film set - I laughed and quickly “declined with regrets.” Transcontinental adventures are for Hobbits whose parents don't live in Taiwan, where a visit home can suck up all of my annual vacation time in one fell swoop.

But after the default responsible answer left my mouth, I began to think, “Why not?” After all, it’s not every day that one’s friend marries a man whose family home practically abuts Hobbiton. So after a few more days of browsing clickbait articles extolling “the value of experiences over things”, I set about planning a way to make the trip work.

My husband, Michael, and I hold standard desk jobs, where we earn exactly zero points for our daily commutes, and our vacation time is accrued hour by painstaking hour on every paycheck. While we are pretty good at dining out every First Friday (3x Sapphire points!) and make sure to do all of our online shopping via the appropriate shopping portals, we don’t earn lucrative point bonuses flying cross-country every week for work like some of our consultant friends do. So our top goal for the trip was to utilize our hard-earned miles to cover the expensive, international legs of our travel, and pay cash for the domestic or shorter-haul international flights.

The lowest fares from the U.S. to Oceania were on United - from San Francisco or Los Angeles to Sydney, Auckland or Melbourne. After some discussion, we decided to book the best fare around our available dates - an open-jaw round-trip itinerary from SFO to AKL, with a 5-day stopover in Sydney. On the return route, we would fly SYD to SFO by way of a 10-hour layover in Vancouver, just in case we wanted to eke out the last little drop of fun before we headed home. 

But since we live in Texas, we still had to figure out a way to get from Austin to San Francisco.

First, we put our Companion Pass to awesome use. Despite our departure date being the first day of Memorial Day weekend, we booked early enough on Southwest that we found a one-way awards fare to Los Angeles. Since it was a direct flight, the taxes and fees were only $2.50, multiplied by two for the both of us.

Obviously, Los Angeles and San Francisco are more than 400 miles apart… linked by one of the most scenic car routes in the world. I’ve always wanted to drive down the Pacific Coast Highway, probably from listening to The Ataris at an impressionable age. A stroke of genius suggested that perhaps driving up the Pacific Coast Highway could be just as much fun, if we could overlook the fact that the coastline view would be one highway lane farther away (since American cars drive on the right side of the road).

It turns out the travel odds were ever in our favor: Since most people prefer the unobstructed coastal view, we found that SoCal car rental companies drop rental rates ridiculously low for drivers willing to drop off rental vehicles north. Since the rental rates were the same across all the car models, and the goal of the trip was “Adventure, ho!”, we scored ourselves a Ford Mustang convertible rental for the pricy, pricy rate of $1/day.

We chose not to book a hotel beforehand, since we wanted to leave ourselves free to roam the coastline and stop wherever we pleased. We knew we would be gambling on availability over a holiday weekend, so we weren’t upset when we ended our night in Cambria and found every local place booked to capacity. We parked in a nice, small-town parking lot for the evening and settled in for a long nap.

The backseat of a Ford Mustang is incredibly comfortable for sitting, but the deep bucket design makes it a horrific sleeping experience if you like to lie down. You’re far better off crawling into the front seat and reclining it down all the way.

We made it into the Bay Area at a leisurely pace, stopping at Big Sur, Carmel and several other stops along the way that caught our fancy. We brought an audio adapter, but didn’t have enough reception for Spotify or Pandora along most of the route, so were limited to playing the few mp3s we had in our iTunes accounts.

Since our muscle car was so powerful, we thought that the cost of gas might negate our savings on the rental rates. However, we only had to fill up the tank once, right before dropping off the car - 489 miles for $78 wasn’t bad at all. We made it to the check-in counter in plenty of time to freak out because we had forgotten to get Australian visas. No biggie - $40 later, we had electronic visas and were on our way. Note to self: Sloppy oversight.

My hotel awards game is not where it should be - since I often travel to visit friends or family, I usually stay in their homes. Hotels.com has treated me pretty well through the years, since its chain-agostic loyalty program tracks my infrequent hotel stays for me. I booked the Travelodge in Sydney for a combination of location + cost, since I knew we would appreciate some privacy and quiet for jet lag recovery that first day.

Free breakfast allowed us to leave our hotel every morning with coffee in hand, and we don’t mind eating an extra meal here and there like the fat Hobbits we secretly aspire to be. We spent four extremely happy days exploring the Sydney Zoo, biking around Manly Beach, catching up with international friends and shopping more than was good for us. Sydney stole my heart with its beaches, people, food and culture… while its prices stole my savings.

Regrettably, the timing of the wedding coupled with the limited amount of vacation time we had available meant we couldn’t make it to the Australian West Coast, the Great Barrier Reef, or the South Island of New Zealand in time. So we opted to check out Melbourne on our return from Auckland just so we could see at least one other Australian city for comparison. By this point, we were nearly out of rewards points so we purchased Virgin Australia flights (using our Sapphire Preferred card and the Ultimate Rewards portal, of course). 

Although we could have checked bags for the Southwest and United legs of our flights, we knew that Virgin Australia would have much more stringent requirements for luggage. So we opted to bring just two carry-on suitcases and two personal items (duffle bag for Michael, large backpack for me) for the full two weeks. This included 12 pounds of wedding photography camera equipment, winter jackets for Down-Under climate, and gifts for the bride.

When we reached Auckland, we opted for a rental car since the Hobbiton film set is about 100 miles away from the airport. The bride recommended GO Car Rentals, which was simple and straightforward with decent customer service. The most nervewracking part of it all was driving on the left side of the road.

Since our itinerary in Auckland was so packed with wedding-related responsibilities, we ended up hotel-hopping every night. Again, Hotels.com came in handy for me because I searched by the most geographically accessible stay instead of trying to juggle or maximize my points redemption or earnings.

The second night we were there, we went completely “off the grid” and booked a local bed-and-breakfast near Hobbiton that had housed Elijah Wood during LotR filming. We knew it would be a late night after the wedding, and we wanted to experience a little taste of local country life anyway. The hosts of Chestnut Lane Cottages are an adorable older couple who have been in the business for many years. If their rave reviews on TripAdvisor weren’t enough to sway me, then their extremely flexible policy and Kathleen’s glorious, Shire-worthy homemade breakfast spread made me an adoring customer for life.

One of the most memorable experiences of my life will always be lying on the quiet backyard lawn, looking up at the most beautiful, clearest-sky display of stars I have ever seen.

We did run into a snafu on the final night, when we booked a Hotels.com affiliate near the famous black-sand beaches of Piha. A new staff member had inadvertently given up our room to a large local party. The second car-camping night of our trip was even less fun than the first, since we didn’t have any drinking water with us. The misery was all worth it the following morning, however, when we saw the stunning sunrise over that incredibly calm, majestic shoreline.

(A few firm emails and phone calls to Hotels.com customer service netted us a refund for that night’s stay, plus a couple of credit vouchers toward future stays. I’m OK with that.)

By the time we made it to Melbourne, the winter rainy season seemed to have set in, and our health wasn’t too much better. We spent the majority of our time nursing nasty colds we’d picked up from sleeping in the car, venturing out only for food and a little bit of damp sightseeing. We opted for an AirBnB in Melbourne, sharing a large apartment with two very respectful university students for just $55/night. The high-rise building boasted a concierge, a full gym/hot tub/pool on the rooftop, and a great location for a sticker price a third of any hotel rate we found in that area.

A quick jaunt back to Sydney gave us our final night in the city, where we spent our free Hotels.com award stay on the Sheraton at the Park. We soaked in the luxurious tub, dined at a 4-star restaurant, and watched fireworks over the harbor.

From Sydney back to San Francisco, we stopped in Vancouver for half a day. We had originally planned to grab a bus and explore the city, opted against it in favor of airport naps since we were sick. We had just visited Vancouver the summer before and seen most of what would’ve been accessible over a half-day trip; otherwise, we probably would have popped a few more Advil and made ourselves go anyway.

We spent two days in San Francisco visiting my best friend and her boyfriend, who very graciously hosted us alongside of all our germs. The final leg of our journey home, via the Southwest Oakland airport, was as affordable as the first.

Many of the reader success stories on The Points Guy celebrate ridiculously low fares or free perks. Our Hobbiton adventure doesn't quite fall in that category. We weren’t booking our trip to coincide with supersale fares or low-cost travel times, nor were we able to take advantage of a strong U.S. dollar currency conversion. However, a few hours of planning and day-to-day rewards accrual allowed us be there for our friends during their once-in-a-lifetime moment, and gave us some incredible memories to boot. And considering we spent around $40/day per person out of pocket (before food and tickets, etc.), our points helped us splurge on a vacation we wouldn’t otherwise have been able to take.

Southwest Rapid Rewards points: 19248

United MileagePlus points: 160,000

(125,000 transferred from Ultimate Rewards)

Hotels.com awards stay: 1 (worth ~$180.00)

Southwest flights: $10.00

(paid with Southwest Premier)

United taxes/fees: $315.20

(paid with Chase Sapphire Preferred through Ultimate Rewards)

Virgin Australia flights: $584.00

(paid with Chase Sapphire Preferred through Ultimate Rewards travel portal; earned ~1500 Ultimate Reward points)

Hotels.com stays: $427.84 for 4 nights

(earned 4/10s of a future free stay, plus received a refund for a canceled booking + $250 in credit toward a future stay)

AirBnB: ~$157.00 for three days, flexible check-in/check-out

Bed and Breakfast: ~$110.00 for one night, free breakfast

Thrifty car rental: $12.47 for 2 days

GO car rental: ~$90.00 USD for 3 days

Gas: $138.14 for ~750 miles

Total: ~$1260.65

Photos taken: 4,938

Meals eaten: 77 (we averaged 5 a day!)

Beaches visited: 9