Cutest travel game ever!

We're taking off for a summer road trip next month, and so I'm starting to shop for some new travel games to keep the kids entertained in the car. I came across this adorable handmade tic-tac-toe set on Etsy. It's made of 100% felt and decorated in diverse embroidered technique. $30. More info.

Drive, fly, or take the train?

Everyone in the travel industry is talking about it. Airlines are up this summer. If you didn't book weeks ago, you're going to be hard pressed to find any deals for June, July, or August.

So if you're traveling on a budget, does that mean you should opt for a road trip or train travel? Are these options cheaper?

USA Today answers this question in a recent article by looking at the cost of travel for three summer trips. Boston to New York City, Los Angeles to Las Vegas and Indianapolis to Chicago. The writer priced out airfare, bus fare, train tickets, and road-trip fuel costs, and also calculated the amount of time each respective travel method would take. Each scenario shows round-trip per-person costs, including all taxes and fees. Estimated duration times are each-way. For the fuel test comparisons, the writer checked prices on AAA's Fuel Cost Calculator using a 2005 Honda Civic as an example.

Route: Boston/New York
Flight Price/Duration: $123/1h 20m
Train Price/Duration: $98/4h 10m (NE Regional), $221/3h 35m (Acela)
Bus Price/Duration: $19/4h 15m
Fuel Price/Duration: $42/3h 40m

Route: Los Angeles/Las Vegas
Flight Price/Duration: $130/1h
Train Price/Duration: No train option
Bus Price/Duration: $60/5h 45m
Fuel Price/Duration: $54/4h 20m

Route: Indianapolis/Chicago
Flight Price/Duration: $156/1h
Train Price/Duration: $56/5h 5m
Bus Price/Duration: $28/3h 15m
Fuel Price/Duration: $35/3h 6m

A camera kids can't break!

Mom and dad enjoy snapping pictures on family trips--why not let kids get in on the fun?

This real digital camera from Fisher Price is tough enough, and easy enough, for kids to use themselves. The buttons are big and easy for little hands to press. And the controls are simple to follow. Store up to 500 pictures with 64 MB of internal memory. Requires four AAA batteries. Retails for around $50. More info here.

My new favorite iPhone app for travel: AAA TripTik

You're on a road trip, in the middle of nowhere, nearly out of gas, what do you do?

If you have an iPhone you check out AAA's latest app, AAA TripTik, that allows you to find gas stations close to your locations--and not only that. It will provide fuel prices at those stations so you can locate the cheapest price.

Yet again, the auto club comes to the rescue. This time with a GPS-enabled app that's basically a mobile version of the popular TripTik travel planner available at AAA.com. It similarly shows fuel prices and spots AAA Approved hotels and restaurants, attractions, AAA offices and other points of interest near a user’s location. Hotel information includes AAA’s Diamond Ratings based on professional in-person inspections and the option to call for reservations with the touch of a button. What's more, this app is free.

Kids Night Out Bingo

We all eat out more when we're traveling. It's part of the fun. But when you have young kids--who can't sit still for longer than 10 minutes--it can be challenging.

Enter Kid's Night Out Bingo, a great game designed to keep little ones entertained in restaurants.

This twist on the classic is completely self-contained and portable, with punch-through icons to mark success in bingo (and not chewing with their mouths open).

Purchase the game for $8 here.

Smarter Travel: 5 off-peak summer destinations

Summer is the most popular time for family travel because the kids are out of school. But it's also an expensive time to hit the road.

Smarter Travel came up with these five destinations where you'll actually find lower air fares and hotel rates in June, July, August.

1) St. Lucia — Many tourists stay away during hurricane seasons but the storms rarely touch ground.
2) Costa Rica — Summer is the rainy season but temperatures are still in the high 70s.
3) Miami — Summer humidity and hurricane warnings keep many tourists at bay, which means the beaches, hotels, restaurants, everything is less crowded.
4) Sri Lanka — It's Monsoon season on this island south of India, but the rain usually stops in the late afternoon and you can enjoy the spectacular scenery and wildlife.
5) Australia — It's winter time down under but even then the weather is quite pleasant.

Read the full story.

Kids addicted to computer games less likely to travel later in life

As 3-D technology improves, children are increasingly able to visit exotic, virtual worlds simply by parking themselves in front of a computer screen.

Futurologist Ian Yeoman, author of Tomorrow's Tourist, is predicting that this will curb kids' curiosity in exploring the real world.

In a report sponsored by Lastminutetravel.com, Yeoman said that kids who are spending their time playing computer games and surfing the Internet are less likely to travel.

What's he basing this on?

Trends he has studied in Japan.

Yeoman says: “They’ve had deflation and also the Japanese consumer has gone inward. So what they’ve seen in the last ten years is that they’re spending more now on in-home entertainment and technology rather than traveling the world. That’s an indicator of what could happen here.”

Source: Marketing Times

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanwalsh/ / CC BY 2.0

Don't forget to sign your kids up for frequent-flier programs

It's a huge mistake so many parents make--they sign themselves up for the airline frequent flier program but they never take the time to fill out the forms for their kids.

Yes, it's a hassle, but you should take the time because you don't want to throw miles out the window.

My kids recently became members of Virgin's Elevate program and at first I tried to sign them up online. But the system wouldn't allow me to do it and it wasn't clear why. I called customer service and the problem was that you can use only one email and I was using the same email for my account, and trying to use the same one for theirs. They're only 5 and 7 so they don't have email addresses.

And so I had to get them email addresses...sounds like a lot of work but they're already flown Virgin three times and they're on their way to a free flight.

Budget Travel: 15 places every kid shcould see

Budget Travel magazine has put together a list of 15 places all kids should see. This list is a great resource as you plan your summer travels.

You'll find an excerpt below and can find the full story by clicking here.

1) Ellis Island Museum, New York City: About 40 percent of Americans are descended from someone who immigrated through this station. Visiting is a powerful experience, thanks to the smartly curated exhibits—and you get a terrific view of the Statue of Liberty on the same ferry ride (ellisisland.org, free guided tours, audio tours $8).

2) Ground Zero, New York City: The hole in lower Manhattan is sacred ground. The nearby Tribute-WTC Center exhibits crushed firefighter helmets and other recovered items (tributewtc.org, $10, students $5, kids under 12 free).

3) Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.: This is a city of inspiring sights: the Washington Monument, Arlington National Cemetery, and the Jefferson and Vietnam Veterans memorials. Still, the 19-foot marble statue of our 16th president is a can't-miss (nps.gov/linc, free).

4) Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, Va.: Kids growing up with e-mail and iPods might not believe it, but there was life before electricity, and even before a United States. The 301-acre open-air museum features hundreds of restored, reconstructed, and historically furnished buildings, and costumed guides tell the stories of the men and women of the 18th-century city (history.org, $35, kids 6-17 $18).

5) USS Arizona Memorial, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii: Sunk by a surprise attack on December 7, 1941, the USS Arizona remains six feet below the water as a lasting monument to World War II veterans. A memorial that spans the sunken battleship was dedicated in 1962 (nps.gov/usar, free).

Click here for all 15.

Venice, La.: After Katrina, before the oil spill

Last summer, my family drove to Venice, La. This is one of the first places to be affected by the oil spill and so I thought I'd re-share this post. At the time, the area was recovering from Katrina and now they're being hit with this spill.

If you look at a satellite map and zone in on southern Louisiana, you'll see that the Mississippi River branches out into several water channels. Before dumping into the Gulf of Mexico, the channels run through skinny fingers of land, and on the last day of our road trip we take Highway 23 down one of these peninsulas to Venice. A two-hour drive from New Orleans, the town is the most southern community on the Mississippi accessible by automobile and many refer to it as the end of the world.

Our drive through the lower Mississippi River delta immerses us in a landscape that's long and flat, vast and mysterious, even mystical. The land rises only an inch or so above sea level and it is so low-lying that at a distance it disappears into a blend of sky and water. The road is surrounded on either side by levees, which serve as protection when the Mississippi water level rises, and as we drive I feel as if the smallest wave could cover us in water.

Highway 23 also offers a front-row view of Hurricane Katrina damage. The storm hit southeastern Louisiana on August 29, 2005, and it completely destroyed Venice and nearby towns, leaving them 10 to 20 feet under water. We pass demolished homes, fire stations, and grocery stores with sunken roofs, broken windows, and fallen walls. Rusty cars are piled high in open fields; dejected boats clutter the roadside.

While the devastation is apparent, signs of rebirth are even more discernible. The community has worked hard to rebuild and new construction is everywhere. We drive by countless new homes, most of them lifted high up off the ground on stilts.

The kids spot a shiny new playground, constructed with funds from Project Rebuild Plaquemines, a nonprofit organization established after the hurricane to assist with restoration of the area. A sign reads: "This park is dedicated to those whose lives were forever changed by Katrina--those who lost so much and those whose generosity helped to restore what was lost. Let it be known that this storm has marked us and changed us, but we have persevered." It's a gorgeous playground but nobody is there.

Where do you grab a bite to eat at the end of the world? The Riverside Cafe in Venice is one of the few places. We walk into a dimly lit room with deer trophies decorating the walls. A few men wearing rubber boots that ride up past their knees sit around picnic tables. We're clearly the only people eating in the restaurant who don't work on a fishing boat or an oil platform. We order some fried catfish, which tastes as if it was just pulled out of the river.

Our waitress, Leslie Smith, tells us the restaurant was under 15 feet of water after Katrina. She says that's why the mural of a swamp on the back wall is faded. It was painted by a French man who traveled through town, bedded down with the cafe owners, and paid for his keep by painting the back wall of their restaurant. "We're so glad the mural survived," Smith says. "It's special."

Smith was born and raised in Venice. She moved up the road to Belle Chasse after Katrina hit but eventually came back to her hometown and now teaches at the K-12 school that she attended as a child. "Why did you come back?" I ask her. "There's no place like home," she says. "And that's how 90 percent of the people who lived here before Katrina felt. People wanted to come back. They moved into tents because their homes were demolished. They wanted to live here on this land."

We drive 10 miles down the road beyond the cafe, past a marina where some fishing boats are docked. This is a popular spot for sport-fishing, and the few outsiders who do visit this part of the world come to catch fish.

As we head further south, water laps up against the road and sections are under several inches of water. Egrets and cranes wade through the small lakes. The birds get thicker and thicker and we have to drive slowly.
The road suddenly ends. A sign reads: "You have reached the southern most point in Louisiana." We stop to take photos of the sign. A crab scurries across the road.
We drove over 2,5000 miles to reach the mouth of the river--and taking a few photos of the sign doesn't satisfy us. I want a more poignant conclusion to our trip. We decide that we'd like to rent a motor boat and travel further down the river and so we follow signs to Bud's Boat Rentals. On the way we meet a friendly pelican who probably would have let me touch him if I tried.

It turns out that Bud's doesn't rent boats to families like us. Rather the business runs supply boats between Venice and the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. We learn this from Roy Mareno, Jr., who is sitting behind a big desk.

The dark gray clouds outside start dumping rain and so we give up on our plans to find a boat rental. Instead we pull up chairs in Mareno's office. He's a bivocational minister, working as a manager at Bud's and as a pastor at a church in nearby Port Sulphur. When he tells us about his town he's passionate and intense. I can easily picture him speaking to his congregation.

Mareno tells us about enduring Katrina and about the tight-knit community who pulled through the storm. We ask him why people would want to come back to this area that's so vulnerable and clearly exposed to Mother Nature's forces. That's when he starts to tell us about the fish he pulls out of the water and the alligators that come out in the early evening and about the cranes that are pink because they eat so much shrimp. He was born and raised in Venice and he cherishes the area's natural beauty. He's not leaving.

We have been following the river for over two weeks; the river has worked its way into our souls and at the end of our journey it somehow seems fitting to meet someone who has a deep, spiritual connection to the river.

Listen to a sound bite from Mareno here: