New Hotel Wing Shines at Sunshine

Upgraded accommodations at Sunshine Village near Banff

The Banff/Lake Louise area in western Alberta boasts three very different and very intriguing ski areas. Mammoth Ski Louise's network lifts and vast skiable terrain comprise the largest ski area in the Canadian Rockies (or perhaps all of the Rockies). Norquay, the smallest of the trio, is the closest to town and has a reputation for challenge. Like Taos, Norquay's toughest runs are the first you see on approach, with the easier turf out of sight. But Sunshine Village offers something unique in the Banff area: slopeside lodging.

Sunshine is celebrating its 82nd season -- quite a history in the ski world, where many areas date back to the '50s and '60s but hardly any others on this continent reach even the most rudimentary operations back to the 1920s.

When the transport gondola from the valley below stops operating at 5:30 p.m. (10:30 on Fridays), Sunshine Village becomes as self-contained as a ship afloat in a pure white sea. Dining, entertainment, socializing and activities for adults and children are concentrated in the Sunshine Mountain Lodge. The lodge's just-opened new wing features suites and rooms that are compact but complete. "Cozy" rather than "spacious" would be the word. All three ski areas are within the boundaries of Banff National Parks, which meant that the new wing had to replace an old one so as not to extend the building's footprint. The lodge's location just steps from the lifts is unsurpassed.

Space in the rooms and loft suites is tight, especially when guests have their clothing and gear scattered around, so public rooms like the one below are well used for games, socializing or just relaxing.

The loft suites have one regular queen-size bed and one queen-size Murphy bed on the lower level and a second large bed upstairs in the loft. When a family or group of friends share a suite, Sunshine Mountain Lodge accommodations don't provide much privacy, but I do love these duvet covers...

...and the convenient location and the mountain views can't be beat.

Reservations: 87-SKI BANFF (877-542-2633) or 403-277-7669.

Skiing in Colorado This Winter? Buy a Season Pass

Vail Resorts and Intrawest sell such inexpensive season passes that even vacationers benefit

If you are planning to ski Vail and/or Beaver Creek and/or Breckenridge and/or Keystone and/or Arapahoe and/or Heavenly Resort, CA, an EPIC pass is a great value, because it buys a season full of unlimited skiing/riding at all those resorts for $579 per adult and $279 per child. You must buy it before November 15, and the only other hitch is that it is non-transferable and non-refundable. You can even purchase it online. The ""smart pass" comes with an embedded chip for no-hands scanning; keep it in your pocket, and a scanning device at the gate at the bottom of the lift logs you in.

Vacationers do not typically show up at a ski area and purchase a one-day lift ticket, so even if that rarely purchased ticket price were already announced, it wouldn't be relevant. But to underscore the EPIC pass' value, consider that an advance-purchase six-out-of-nine-day lift ticket will be $564 per adult and $522 per child; a seven-out-of-10-day adult ticket will be $658. For overseas visitors who typically take longer ski vacations, the value is even greater.

Intrawest's Colorado resorts (Copper Mountain, Winter Park and Steamboat) offer similarly attractive deals. The Rocky Mountain Super Pass Plus is good for unlimited skiing at Winter Park Resort and Copper Mountain, plus six unrestricted days and unlimited free Friday afternoons throughout the season at Steamboat. It is just $439, which is $50 less than last winter's. If you will not get to Steamboat, the Rocky Mountain Super Pass offers unrestricted access to Winter Park and Copper for just $399.

It's worthwhile for you out-of-staters to buy one of these passes even if you're planning just a five- or six-day ski vacation but might be able to sneak off to Colorado for a long weekend sometime during the winter. Since the passes are unrestricted, that includes holidays. AND you get four $50-off coupons to be used for lift tickets for friends and family, plus discounts on rental/retail, food and beverage and Ski & Ride School lessons. These passes are also available online or at Christy Sports Front Range locations

And, if you are lucky enough to live in Colorado and ski, you can't afford not to glom onto an offer like this -- maybe even both if you get to lots of days or partial days.

Boarding Passes: Printed or Not

Paperless boarding passes: the way of the future?

Once upon a time, airline boarding passes were booklets (often hand-written multi-pagers for connecting or roundtrip flights). They had built-in carbon bars and pages of lengthy small-print legalese about airline and government policies and, if I remember correctly, passengers' rights. They were inserted into a sleeve with the baggage claim checks stapled onto them. Then came machine-printed cards, the envelopes went away (not a bad thing, because it did represent a lot of wasted paper), and now checked-bag receipts are usually stick 'em stubs still attached to the backing that I always hope I don't misplace in case my bag doesn't get off the same plane that I do.

Now, I am reading in "Upgrade: Travel Better" that "Paperless Boarding Passes Increasingly Widespread: Have You Used Them?" They are reportedly in greater use overseas than in the US, where only Continental is using them for inbound flights from Frankfurt and San Juan. According to Upgrade's Mark Ashley, "In lieu of a printed boarding pass, paperless passes are sent to your mobile phone. (Standard text message rates apply…) The pass contains both a barcode and text, identifying the passenger and flight. The square barcode gets scanned twice, once at security, and once at the gate." The TSA must enable security screening operations to accept this technology.

I have the cheapest, simplest cell phone on the planet, with a T-Mobile pay-in-advance plan, and I'm not about to pay for the privilege of having my boarding pass appear on that cell phone. Bad enough for passengers to pay for inflight food, checked bags, preferred seating and assorted surcharges that escalate even the most economical ticket. But I'm probably the Luddite minority here, and people who bond with their Blackberrys and iPhones and all that will jump on this as soon as it becomes available.

Dollar Gains Strength

International travelers might benefit from stronger dollar

If you're thinking about traveling to Europe or Great Britain this fall, and you can find an affordable air fare, you might want to jump on it. The dollar closed stronger against the 15-nation euro than any time in the last seven months (closing at $1.00 = .69€) and also rising against the British pound (closing at $1.00 = £.65). When my husband and I visited England earlier this year, the dollar-to-pound ratio was practically two to one. The current exchange rate doesn't approach the strong dollar that American travelers benefited from several years ago, but it is more favorable to travelers than it was earlier this year. What goes up can go down again, so if you have the time and the budget to go overseas, this might be the time to do it.

"Cat Cam" Reveals the Secret Life of Cats

When you're away, does your cat play?

What does your cat do when you're traveling or even just away for the day? Many people think that cats most of the time -- some would say the better to be lively at night. Jill Villarreal, an animal behavior scientist, was tasked with finding out for Nestle Purina PetCare's Friskies cat food. (As an aside, I still thought that Ralston-Purina made pet food and that Friskies was a separate brand -- and that Nestle wasn't necessarily involved at all. But I was wrong. Turns out that Nestle has owned Purina for quite some time and bought Friskies in 2001.) Anyway, this company, which has its own research center in Lausanne, Switzerland, to study human nutrition and other food-related issues, hired Villarreal to discover the corollary to, "When the cat's away, the mice will play."

Villarreal outfitted 50 housecats with cameras on their collars that took pictures every 15 minutes and then studied a total ot 777 photos. According to a widely published report, based on these pictures that Villarreal analyzed, here's how cats spent their time:

• 22 percent looking out of windows
• 12 percent interacting with other pets in the household
• 8 percent climbing on chairs or "kitty condos"
• 6 per cent sleeping
• 6 percent watching a television, computer or other screen
• 6 percent hiding under tables
• 5 percent playing with toys
• 4 percent eating or looking at food

Now I'm no math whiz, but those percentages don't add up to 100  percent. I want to know what they did the rest of the time. I think it might be trying to get cat cam off their necks.

United Backpedals on One Extra Fee

Airline rescinds plan to charge economy passengers for meals on international flights

Airlines have been tromping all over themselves with unpopular add-on fees, one of the more recent of which was United's plan to start selling meals to international passengers. The airline polled passengers who seemingly howled their disapproval of this new fee. Mark Ashley who writes the "Upgrade: Travel Better" blog is skeptical that United is responding to its customers.

"What I’m also hearing is that the airlines’ partners in the Star Alliance
are another major source of the pressure," he wrote. "Disgust at the dilution of
the Star Alliance brand? Fear of reprisals from their own customers on
United-operated codeshares, enraged at having to pay a fee to eat a hockey-puck
sandwich? Or just the last straw, after seeing more and more fees pile
up?... Bottom line: The international meal fee is dead. For now. But don’t
expect this to be the last time you hear this concept floated, at United or
anywhere else. This is guaranteed to be one of those zombie ideas you think
you’ve killed, but it just keeps rising again, under the guise of “'testing new
ideas.'”

Denver Empties Out, but Memories Linger On

Political and media travelers are pulling out of Denver by the thousands

Legions of national and international media have been leaving Denver and heading for St. Paul for the upcoming Republican National Convention. Some delegates and guests have been heading home, while others are staying on to enjoy the holiday weekend in Denver or in the mountains. Denver International Airport handled some 155,300 passengers yesterday (Friday, August 30), the day after the convention., slightly fewer on the first day of a popular holiday weekend.

On D-Day (most attendees' Departure Day) weather was superb, and while lines were long, the delays that some people experienced, especially at United, might have started elsewhere in the country and impacted the Denver hub.

Come fall, Denver and the rest of the country will see a decrease in air service. A combination of a slumping economy and uncertain fuel prices (down from their recent highs but still costly) continue to impact airlines. They in turn have tried to increase revenues with fare increases and unprecedented surcharges and cost-cutting maneuvers. Jazz, Air Canada's regional partner carrier, just announced that it would replace life vests with floatation cushions to save weight.

During major airlines' capacity cuts in the early 1990s and again a decade later, low-fare carriers entered the market to take up some of the seat slack. This time, air fares between major cities are up 16 percent since the first of the year and up 36 percent on routes less traveled, and low-fare carriers were the first to feel the fuel pinch. And airlines have made it more difficult to redeem frequent-flyer miles to save travel dollars.