The Days of Comparing Airfares Are Gone
With the recent announcement from Spirit Airlines that they were going to charge as much as $100 for a carry-on bag, the days of simply comparing airfare prices are long gone. In fact, says Charlie Leocha, director of the Consumer Travel Alliance, this is a wake-up call for the Department of Transportation. “Consumers don’t fully understand just how much these extra fees end up adding to the total cost of travel.” He adds, “Our surveys have shown that more than half of the airline travelers in the U.S. find themselves surprised by extra fees after they have purchased their airline tickets.” Leocha notes that a typical US Airways flight from Washington Reagan to Boston can be purchased with an airfare of between $140 to $170 on most dates with an advanced purchase. Baggage charges for two checked bags will cost $120 round-trip, adding 70 to 85 percent to the cost of travel. Adding a special seat reservation can easily double the cost of travel. “Unless a passenger is traveling with only a small purse,” notes Leocha, “they will be required to pay some sort of fee on Spirit Airlines, which makes comparing only airfares bogus.” Make sure you take into account the price of luggage and reserving a seat the next time you book a flight!
Most parents gauge the growth of their children by their height. I gauge the growth of my two kids by how far they can go on a treetop obstacle course called 
We wake up to blinding sunshine at Buck’s Harbor in South Brooksville, best known as the spot where children’s book author and illustrator Robert McCloskey (“Make Way for Ducklings,” “Blueberries for Sal”) summered. FDR would also stop here on his way to Campobello Island for a short ice cream break. We found some of those famous wild Maine blueberries in our pancakes that morning before hoisting the sails and setting a course for that hump atop Big Spruce Island. Each one of these Penobscot Bay harbors and islands has a legacy and Big Spruce Island is no different. This is the place where artist Fairfield Porter and his brother, photographer Eliot Porter, would spend their summers and there’s still a working artists’ community on the island today.
The kids are stand-up paddle boarding near the middle of the lake. Lisa is sea kayaking with her siblings and their spouses closer to the shoreline. Steady wind blowing through my hair, I’m at the tiller of an 18-foot sailboat accompanied by my mother-in-law, Fran. I grew up sailing on the large lake to the south, Lake George, where there’s far more boat traffic and large passenger steamboats like The Mohican, which I always seemed to be on a direct line to hit. But here on the southern tier of mighty Lake Champlain, there is little traffic on this July weekday and I don’t feel a worry in the world. Vermont’s