green living, smart spending
Our National Parks are a national treasure. Celebrate them all during National Parks Week, April 15 to 23, with FREE admission on the two weekends and enjoy some of more than 84 million acres of scenery and 27,000 historic structures, from the Statue of Liberty to Yellowstone. Public lands are facing a tough four years,
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Travel technology: the world’s first solar-powered road has opened in a small village in France, and there’s a solar road test project in the USA. The solar road in Normandy is paved with more than 30,000 square feet of solar panels which are specially reinforced to take the weight of cars and trucks, including big
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If you own a Mercedes-Benz vehicle, this perk is for you: Get behind the wheel of a racecar and drive yourself around one of the legendary racetracks of Europe, including Hockenheim, with a professional race driver as your guide. The Mercedes-Benz Classic Trackdays experience is organized by the former racing driver Jörg van Ommen, a
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Scam alert: restaurant upselling. Ever wonder why your restaurant bill is so much more than you expected? It’s probably because restaurant employees are trained to lure you to ordering more, and higher priced menu items, than you planned. What used to be called “bait-and-switch” is now called upselling, and restaurants are not alone in the
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It’s awards season. We’re not talking about the Oscars, Tonys or Grammys, but about the best vehicles of 2017. One of my favorite vehicle awards is the one for best overall value, because it is based on total ownership costs, including original purchase price, maintenance costs, even fuel costs via the model’s MPG rating, when
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Everyday, it seems, we hear about hacking, identity theft or some other invasion of our digital privacy. Here’s how to protect your online life from cyber criminals on the road, because vacations are not the time to relax your personal safety, which includes taking internet security precautions. Before You Go Patch Up. Check all your
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Few things beat the smell and taste of a warm, freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. It has become the signature welcome greeting at DoubleTree Hotels around the world, the chain is celebrating the opening of its 500th hotel by publishing a FREE cookbook with cookie recipes, and more, to download. Although the original chocolate chip
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The road to the future is paved with concept cars, an important glimpse of the technology and design we’ll be driving one day soon. Concepts from Jaguar, Mitsubishi, Chrysler, VW and Toyota are being showcased at current auto shows. Some concepts are just for show, while others are really pre-production models, giving the R&D team
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ecoXplorer Evelyn Kanter visits Churchill, Canada, where polar bear outnumber humans.
Standing on its hind legs, an adult male polar bear can reach 18 feet or more, so you don’t want to be in a cute little subcompact car, or even a pick-up, that a curious bear could push over or climb on. The “tundra buggies” that carry tourists for close-up views of these phenomenal animals are bigger and tougher than the bears. Think school bus on steroids.
JetBlue is now giving passengers FREE WiFi on all domestic flights. JetBlue claims to be the first U.S. airline to offer the perk. Other airlines have on-board WiFi, but you have to pay for it. Delta and American Airlines offer WiFi on most domestic flights, for $16 a day, which includes connecting flights. Southwest charges
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