Good golly, I had to take a Taxi yesterday to get from an airport to a hotel.  $20.00.  Gone.  Yikes!  I think we drove several miles.  But I’m not sure, I just watched the meter and enjoyed every inch of pavement that I could.  Which in case you’ve not been in a car before, is not really a high-pleasure experience.  I’d like to thank the taxi driver for the fine Cubanisimo music his iPod was playing.  It really gave me great pleasure to enjoy the latin grooves that the whole ensemble was playing.  There is nothing quite as refreshing as a latin groove in exepensive transportation.  Four out of Five dentists polled recommended it to their patients.

So after paying the fine man for driving me a distance and then being fare about it, I met up with a colleague, walked to a somewhat nearby eating establishment and then nearly bled from my eyes when the bill for a hot dog and a soda came to just under $12.00.  For that price I could almost get to the airport!  Fortunately the food gave me sustenance enough to maintain me for long enough to make it to dinner where someone else was paying.  But seriously?!  $12.00?  It wasn’t even a big cup!

And thus, as I leave off here I want to make this one reccomendation: never leave your homes, and by all means never travel.  Traveling is expensive and there isn’t much good that comes from it except that you can see new places and have new experiences in life.  But that’s over-rated.  You can have new experiences by eating dirt and trying new food.  Oh, and if someone else takes you out to Del Frisco’s I LOVED their crab cake and I LOVED their potatoes aug gratin.  I hesitate to call any food perfect, but I don’t hesitate to call these perfect, they were that good.

I arrived back from the West coast today at the Denver International Airport around 2:30.   A family trip mixed with a vacation that was all cash based.  We had to sell some stuff online and cash in some frequent flyer miles to get the whole family there, but it cost us what we could afford to go on the trip.  A vacation like this is something I would have scoffed at just a year ago simply because our finances were such a jumbled mess.  We got to spend some time with family and with that family we got to go see some beautiful wildlife - and Mt. St. Helens which erupted the weekend before we visited it.

We ate some stellar food at the Red Rooster Bakery, Mo’s Chowder, and contributed cash into the family’s grocery budget to eat crab [we had a connection that got us the crab at dirt cheap prices like $4.00/pound for huge legs], pork crown roast, and had a fantastic time.  The whole time was fun, low stress, and since it was all with money we had in the bank I had no fears of what the next month’s statements would look like.  This trip was a mix of frugality where needed and some splurging in places to make sure that some coastal events were maximized.  Let’s face it, sea food at restaurants is just expensive (barring Long John Silver’s and such).

To her credit, my wife did a great job of planning out the trip, finding great airline deals,finding a hotel that was low cost, but with great amenities for us in Newport, OR.  What sites do you use to make sure you’re getting the best deal on trips, travel and vacation?  I’d love to be able to add to resources she has [which I'll make sure to get to post here].