Keeping it Close to Home

Have you looked around your city lately. Where can you go that you have never been before. Where I am, we are blessed to have the majority of the National Parks at our doorstep. Most less than a days drive. Have I visited them all. Not even close! There are great places for children in the very state that I live in and I have never taken them there either.

So here is my travel tip for this week. Find somewhere close to home, somewhere you can drive to in less than 4 hours. Book a hotel near there and take your family this weekend for a Close to Home Family Getaway. Enjoy your own Town!

To Go or Not to Go?

Gas prices are falling and as the summer is slowly diminishing, prices for travel are going down. Airline ticket prices are falling and it's getting less expensive to drive. Now is a great time to get out and go! If you can be flexible, it's not to late to grab your kids and enjoy a weekend family vacation or pack a swimsuit for you and your sweetheart and your ipods and take a surprise romantic getaway to spend the weekend relaxing on the beach. Check out the airlines prices today and tomorrow. By tomorrow night the "specials" will be gone, but most airlines offer great weekend prices for getaway trips. You usually have to leave on a Thursday or Friday and come back Monday or Tuesday but you can get airline prices of $49 each way! It makes a great family getaway and they do offer some really great destinations! Check them out now!

Watch For Travel Fees

I am excited to see the next Get Gephardt on our Channel 2 news. It's a program where Bill Gephardt takes on big corporations, large companies and gets answers and sometime even money back for consumers that have been taken advantage of by these large companies.

Tomorrow's is all about Travel Fees. I am really interested to see what he finds out about the airline baggage fees, fuel surcharges and such, not to mention the insane "resort fees" charged by the hotels for any amenity, if you use it or not!

Get Gephardt comes on, on the 10pm Channel 2 news here. If you get a chance to see it, please tell me what you think. After it airs, I will be sure to add a link to it, so those of you that are not in my area can see it too. I would love to know what everyone thinks!

Here's that link, as promised! It was a good one!

Get Gephardt: How Hotels And Airlines Get Away With Making You Pay "Fees"

My Favorite Children's Books

When I travel with my children, I always bring along my favorite children's books. Not their favorite books, but mine, because I am the one that will be reading it over and over. Two of my favorite children's books are Silly Sally and Dinosaurumpus. They are fun rhyming books with bright pictures and laughable lyrics. The kids love them and I enjoy reading them. It makes travel with five children not just bearable but enjoyable.