Free Entrance to National Parks, April 17-25

The National Park Service is waiving entrance fees to the nation's 392 national parks during National Park Week, April 17-25. In addition, many national park concessioners are offering special promotions during that week. Go to the park system's website, find your nearest national park and check on specifics. Thanks to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and others for this springtime gift to the public.

More WiFi in Sky

US Airways introduces inflight Internet access -- for free at first

I like wireless access while I'm waiting at the airport and in fact have written any number of posts on this blog from terminals -- and of course, checked E-mail too. And I totally love  the growing number of airports that offer free WiFi.

So far, I've not been a flight that offered wireless service -- but when I am, I'll bet I will. This week, US Airways became the latest carrier to offer GOGO Internet access, initially on five Airbus A321 aircraft and with all 51 of the carrier's A321 aircraft WiFi-enabled by June 1. Until that date, they are offering free WiFi access to first-time users. US Airways joins AirTran, Air Canada, Alaska, American , Continental, Delta, United  and Virgin America with WiFi on all or some flights.

After June 1, the charge will be $4.95-$12.95 for laptops and netbooks and $4.95-$7.95, for mobile devices, depending on the length of the flight. I don't know whether front-of-the-plane PAX will enjoy free access after June 1. This development is pretty ironic. Use of cell phones in flight is prohibited, but now that there's revenue to be derived, airlines are jumping aboard the GOGO technology train, which that Aircell says, "turns a commercial airplane into a WiFi hotspot."  As I write this, a counter that looks like an old-style automobile odometer on  Aircell's home page  indicates that 791 aircraft are equipped with the service.

Affordable Family Skiing Includes Freebies for Kids

Free kids' lift tickets, lodging, air fare and/or rentals ease the family skiing budget

I'm spending the weekend at Steamboat, the Colorado resort that pioneered Kids Ski Free, which offers free skiing/riding, lodging and even rentals for children 12 and under on a one-to-one basis with a full-fare adult with a stay of five nights or longer. Several years ago, the resort sweetened the offers still more with a discounted teen ticket for youngsters. Childcare and ski school are not included in the Kids Ski Free program. The latest added benefit is that kids also fly free to nearby Yampah Valley Regional Airport on American, Northwest and United. If you happen to be coming to Steamboat on the January 16-18, check out the resort's Family Snow Fest during that weekend. For details, call 877-237-2628 or 970-871-5252.

Elsewhere in Colorado, Aspen/Snowmass has partnered with Frontier with an unprecedented Kids Fly Free/Stay Free offer. Children 12 and under fly, stay and rent free with a minimum three-day, four-night package from "select" cities with Sunday through Thursday arrivals. This package cannot be booked online but only though 800-214-7669, with a December 23, 2008, booking deadline.

Sun Valley has a similar program in which children aged two to 11 fly free to Ketchum/Sun Valley on Horizon Air's nonstops from Los Angeles or Seattle when booked in conjunction with "a qualifying lodging package during selective travel dates." Youngsters 15 and under also ski and stay free in a participating Sun Valley Company property during January 4-31 and March 1-30, 2009. Off-peak fares are available Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday. Fares higher on Monday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. The air tickets can be purchased until the end of the promotional period.

Up in the Canadian Rockies, two children 12 and under ski free with two paying adults with a package that includes seven nights' of economy-style accommodations in Banff or Lake Louise, and lift tickets for the three resorts that participate in the SkiBig3 group: Ski Norquay, Sunshine Village and Lake Louise Mountain Resort. The package is available all season long except for the December 20 through January 4 holiday peak. Call 877-754-7080 for reservations.

Chicago Neighborhood Wrecked for O'Hare's Hoped-For New Runway

Money talks, but neighborhood is destroyed, to make way for airport expansion -- maybe

I have no affection for O'Hare International Airport (ORD) and try very hard to avoid connecting there -- especially in winter. So I see the upside to a new runway, part of a proposed $15 billion makeover of this busy, congested and inefficient airport. The plan is to replace the congestion-prone model of intersecting runways with a modern parallel runway design. However, I probably won't live long enough to see it completed. The operative word is "proposed," because there is not yet a timetable or a guarantee of funding. As the Chicago Tribune reported (along with a sad picture):

"The remnants of a laundromat and a fast-food restaurant known in the Bensenville neighborhood for its tasty hot dogs fell like matchsticks to O'Hare International Airport's expansion plans on Wednesday.  It took only minutes for the walls and roof to tumble on a commercial building that also housed two other businesses.

"A pair of backhoes armed with claws called munchers'" ripped down the brick exterior of the first of about 500 buildings in the northwest suburb that will leveled. The demolitions are set to make way for the final new runway planned in Chicago's $15 billion overhaul of O'Hare. Dust from the teardown, at 439 E. Irving Park Road, seemed to swirl together with clouds of doubt over the prospects of Chicago completing the massive project, especially with the airline industry in financial turmoil.

"Bensenville Village President Frank Soto acknowledged there are no guarantees the runway will be built. Soto late last year accepted a $16 million payment to the village from Chicago along with other enticements in exchange for Bensenville dropping its decades-long opposition to O'Hare expansion.

"Asked by a reporter Wednesday whether he would object to other uses of the more than 400 acres in Bensenville that Chicago acquired under eminent domain rules if O'Hare expansion were retooled, Soto said: 'We wouldn't mind not having a runway there.'"

So help me understand this. Bensenville's Frank Soto accepted a $16 million payoff to stop opposing an airport expansion that might not happen -- at least not soon. For Chicago, which hopes to modernize it's airport, 16 mill is a small investment in what might be a $15 billion mega-project (or higher, since big construction projects rarely comes on time and under budget). I don't know how much, if anything, people got as compensation for losing their homes or bsuinesses. Unless my arithmetic is way off (which it could be), the payment to Bensenville came to less than $27,000 per vacated and wrecked building.

So the neighborhood was wrecked for an uncertain airport future. Meanwhile, vacated Bensonville buildings south of the airport. According to the press release, "Since last fall, the CDA [Chicago Department of Aviation] has worked with the Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) to provide a unique, hands-on multi-agency training in the now vacant, acquired properties in the Village of Bensenville. The area has been used as a multi-agency training ground for safety and security agencies including the U. S. Department of Justice, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Chicago Police Department, the Chicago Fire Department, the Village of Bensenville, and many city, county, state, federal and assist agencies." Click here for the official press release.

Inn at Lost Creek is a Bright Green Hotel

Back-of-the-house tour reveals Telluride hotel's commendable green initiatives

When I checked in after dark to the Inn at Lost Creek in Telluride's Mountain Village a week ago yesterday, I was appalled at the excess illumination in my room. As I wrote then, every single light in my little suite was blazing. I called housekeeping the next morning and asked for some electricity restraint, and as requested, only the foyer lights were turned on during subsequent evenings' turndown service.

But even better was the impact that even a enviro-rant like mine produced. The inn's sales and marketing manager, Karl Chase, told me that because of my alert, the inn would in the future add a question about additional energy conservation efforts in the pre-arrival questions that are asked of incoming guests. Perhaps both Lost Creek management and I got a big hit of good eco-karma from that one.

He also invited me on a back-of-the-house tour to show how green the hotel is -- and it seems to me to be "very green." When the hotel was built 11 years ago, it was tightly constructed with Pella low-E double-paned windows (obvious to any guest who looks), an energy-efficient, thermitic water heating system and other mechanicals that were state of the art for its time and have held up well.

Other green practices that this behind-the-scenes tour revealed:

• Restaurant 9545 uses eco-friendly compostable/recyclable containers, including sugarcane-based clamshell to-go boxes and utensils instead of plastic (top photo)


• No disposables used in the employee break room
  
• Linens that are no longer usable by a first-rate hotel donated for resale at the Second Chance Humane Society shop in nearby Ridgway


• Cleaning rags are stained or frayed restaurant napkins, dyed so they don't reappear in the restaurant


• As lightbulbs burn out, they are being replaced by CF bulbs; the "always-on" hallway lights are have been the first to be replaced; hotel is stockpiling CF replacement bulbs (center photo) but not discarding those incandescents that still have some life left in them


• Cleaning chemicals are green and also bought concentrated in bulk, mixed at the hotel and refilled into reusable spray bottles to keep excess packaging out of the waste stream (bottom photo)


• The executive boardroom, a small conference space, has outside windows so groups can opt for daylight rather than turning on all the lights all the time


• Low-flow toilets in all bathrooms


• Flex-fuel shuttle vans


• Trash separated and recycled

I appreciate Karl's taking the time to show me these green practices, and I urge environmentally concerned travelers anywhere to go beyond simply reusing linens to help the hotel business be as evironmentally-oriented as possible. Don't be shy about asking what a property's green practices and let hotel management know that these practices are important to you. You probably won't get the kind of tour that I did, but hotel managers will answer your questions and listen to your concerns. IMO, there is no more responsive a business than the hospitality industry -- especially at higher-end hotels. Repeat business and word of mouth are important to them.

With CNN in the background as I write this, reporting on the current crisis in the auto industry, I have to say that if only the Big Three had been as proactive and also paid as much attention to what the public wants as the hotel industry, execs wouldn't be begging Congress for a bailout right now.

Next U.S. Quarters to Feature National Parks

States have been featured on quarter-dollar coins. National Parks are next

Beginning in 1999, the US Mint struck the wildly popular 50 States Quarters series that eventually was extended to include the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories represented in Congress by non-voting representatives (Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the United States Virgin Islands and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). George Washington remained on the face of the coin, while the parade of states and other jurisdictions were on the reverse. Beginning this year, the Mint will begin a 12-year program of releasing quarters depicting 56 of our National Parks and other splendid public lands.

The first five are Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas; Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming; Yosemite National Park, California; Grand Canyon National Park, California; and Mt. Hood National Forest, Oregon. Having these coins in your pocket or purse won't replace the experience of actually traveling to these lands that we collectively own, but they do provide a nice incentive, memory or learning opportunity.

Billions Spent to Annoy Travelers

Transportation Security Agency's multi-billion-dollar budget mostly spent on passenger screening

Just a few days ago, I wrote a post on an inexplicable lapse in the TSA screening process that I personally experienced at Denver International Airport, the world's 10th busiest airport and the fifth busiest in the US, and the overzealous screening at tiny Telluride Regional Airport just three days later. This morning, I began to wonder how much this inconsistency is costing taxpayers.

The TSA's 2007 budget was $5.3 billion, 80 percent of which went to passenger screening (and annoying) at the nation's airports. In no other country that I have visited recently are passengers required to remove their shoes, toss bottled water, take laptops out of briefcases, limit carry-on toiletries to 100 ML or less and display said toiletries in a clear plastic, zip bag of a particular size (one quart).

Admittedly, $5.3 billion (or maybe more by now) is a fraction of what we have spent to invade and occupy Iraq ($500 billion or so since 2003), bail out insurer AIG ($85 billion) or on the proposed bail-out (thus far) for the Big 3 auto companies ($15 billion, but that's supposed to be repaid). It's also an awful lot less that the National Park Service allotment of $2.4 billion to preserve, protect and revitalize our great national treasures or the pathetic $145 million with federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.

When Congress reconvenes in 2009, write to your Senators and Representatives -- whether continuing in office or newly elected -- if you think these priorities are as lopsided as I do.