Feel like going to Hell today? Hell, Michigan, that is---a town about 20 miles outside of Ann Arbor, whose ice cream parlor welcomes visitors with flavors like "scaramel" and "buttersnot." No? Too much for you? Well, what about Half Hell, North Carolina?That shouldn't be quite so full of fire and brimstone.

If there's ever a day to pay homage to a town with a spooky name---and trust me, there are plenty; in fact there's probably one just a few hours' drive from wherever you are---Halloween would be the day. What about Devil Town, Ohio? Devil's Backbone, Connecticut? Or how about visiting another part of the devil's anatomy entirely and heading up to Devil's Elbow in California's Colusa county? And for something a little different, there's always Satan's Kingdom, Vermont.

This weekend, as wildfires raged across the southern half of California and Governor Schwarzenegger channeled The Terminator to warn all arsonists that he will “hunt them down,” I fled to the east and atop the jack-o-lantern laden Sierra Nevada mountains for my annual “girls weekend” at Lake Tahoe.

Now put your frozen-bra and pillow-fight illusions aside. This fall tradition began about five years ago, when we didn’t even know it was going to be a tradition, just a generous invitation to a friend’s family cabin in the woods with views of the lake, mountains, pink-valentine sunsets, and a woo-hooo witchy-woman moon glowing through the giant glass windows.

Photo: One of the Angora Lakes before this year’s fire.

Reading the New York Times travel section this weekend made me yearn for a quick getaway to someplace sunny and warm. Or at least someplace that felt better than here (New York City aka The Big Apple.) Usually I just love fall but it has been a bit of a disappointing fall this year, you know, with the wacky weather and the leaves not quite performing as we’d like all like. Although the air has only just turned chilly this passed week I’m already thinking about what’s next on my travel horizon…

The New York Times seemed to be leaning toward the Caribbean and the call of the warm blue waters. The section was dominated by an opening with a fruity umbrella topped cooler and the allure of soft, sandy beaches. They’re clearly not the only ones with some beach-time on their mind. Maybe it’s a result of the increased access with new flights to the Caribbean but I’ve looked at the data for thanksgiving and noticed that the share of travel to the Caribbean is up 20% this Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving? you ask. Sure thing. It’s trendy to take turkey abroad. Mexico’s share is up by 17%. Even Europe’s is up too. (And I thought the whole Western Hemisphere Passport Initiative and the new passport rules combined with the weak dollar was supposed to be deterring people from traveling? Well apparently not.) What’s more is that these people aren’t like me and thinking I need a little break, uh, now! They’re booking in advance. WAY in advance. The average domestic ticket for thanksgiving this year was booked 85 days prior to departure, international tickets were booked over 100 days in advance. Given that math, that means right now I should be booking for sometime in January possibly more like February.

I remember the first time I went to Guerneville. I was young, naive, and--perhaps most relevantly--freshly out of the closet. After a month-long road trip up to Washington and Canada, my then-girlfriend Amanda and I were hauling back down to our home turf in Los Angeles. We drove through thousands of miles of unknown, un-gay terrain. Amanda peeled the rainbow sticker off the bumper of her Saturn, and we both sunk low into our seats and tried to look less gay.

I'm sure I'm not the only one for whom watching Dirty Dancing for the first time was something of a seminal moment. Who could forget Baby's klutzy insecurity, Johnny's smoldering good looks, the goosebump-inducing finale, and immortal lines like "I carried a watermelon"?

According to the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau, all major San Diego attractions – SeaWorld San Diego, LEGOLAND California, the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park - are open to the public. San Diego International Airport has been in operation throughout the wildfires, and all major freeways are open and flowing well.

Though the San Diego International Airport and John Wayne Airport (Orange County) remain open, travelers with immediate plans to visit Southern California can take advantage of airline policies to waive change fees to these and other area airports. Keep in mind policies vary, and in some cases travelers must commence their trips by November 1. Here, a list of airlines that have adjusted policies in the wake of the fires:

Alaska Airlines
American Airlines
ATA
Continental Airlines
Delta
Frontier Airlines
JetBlue
United Airlines
Northwest Airlines
US Airways
Qantas

Travelocity customers should check the Customer Care page for more information related to their trips.

Travelocity has received information on closures at the following hotels in Southern California, but we advise travelers to check with individual properties to confirm status.

Lake Arrowhead Resort
Pala Mesa Resort
Inn at Rancho Santa Fe
Morgan Run

Travelers to Southern California may run into issues at hotel check in, as some evacuees have chosen hotels over area shelters. Road closures may complicate getting to your destination from the airport; the California Department of Transportation has up-to-date information regarding road closures.

Not too long ago, I won a gift certificate for a last-minute weekend getaway. Problem is, the dollar amount that I won stretches about as far as…Pittsburgh, PA. Or, if I go during off season, I may be able to swing exotic Topeka, KS!

As I started researching my options, I was reminded of an acquaintance’s ongoing tour of America’s underappreciated cities. Once a year, he meets his buddies in a second- or third-tier city that tourists may not clamor to visit: think Bangor, Cleveland, Raleigh. Kansas City was apparently a big hit.

Cleveland photo courtesy of IgoUgo member RoBoNC

There’s something about October. Though I love the triumphant blooming of spring, the snowy days of winter, and the heated energy of summer (provided the heat index is below 90), it’s the slow unfurling of fall that unleashes this little current of bliss in me. As green turns to a kaleidoscope of gold and crimson; the air turns chilly and crisp; and Duane Reade stocks its annual mishmash of Halloween candy, rubber spiders, and superhero masks, I start doing all sorts of ridiculous things, like sighing dramatically (and audibly) at the autumn sunshine; exclaiming 45 times a day to whomever will listen that I love this weather; going for long walks from which I return with a collection of beautiful fallen leaves that I have no idea what to do with; baking. October is my golden hour.

Earlier this week, over lunch with a few journalists and resort executives, one of the hot topics for discussion was customer service as it relates to the airline industry. Not a new topic, for sure (in fact I’ve written about it a few times here), but one that continues to resonate. While we alternately shared horror stories and opinions on what we thought needed to happen to improve customer service, USA Today had just published a story on this very topic in that morning’s paper.

The very next day, several airlines reported their third-quarter earnings. Despite the level of dissatisfaction among passengers, the airlines are doing just fine, thank you. Continental Airlines reported a net profit of $241 million; Southwest, $162 million; and Delta, $220 million; to name a few.

This time of year I’ve got the white stuff on the brain. No, no. Not the Hollywood starlet kind of white stuff—I mean snow, of course. And so I begin to convince (some might say coerce) my friends to take a big ski trip with me.

But in every group there are always a few non-skiers. These poor souls get dragged to the mountain year after year by ski bums who care more about the inches of fresh powder than the amenities. This ski season, to tempt my favorite non-skiing compatriots, I looked up the best on-the-mountain bars. These watering holes are destinations unto their own, affording unmatched alpine views and elixirs to keep you toasty, and all are accessible without skis.

Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member captain oddsocks.

Breakfast at Tartine in San Francisco’s Mission District is a journey--its flaky pastries and café au lait transport you to Paris the instant they touch your lips. On a foggy morning, I met there over the most beautiful and butterscotch-ey bread pudding to be regaled by travel tales and discuss this winter’s hottest food trends with Jen Catto, Travel Director of Gourmet Magazine.

Jen had recently returned from a trip to France in which she tried something she never had before. On the beaches of Brittany at this time of year, large amounts of algae wash up onto shore. It used to be that this algae was only used for bath salts, but local restaurants in St. Malo made the algae into a butter and then used this butter to prepare fish. The aromatic and briney taste that resulted is something that could only come from that particular region, anchoring the dining experience firmly and wonderfully in France at that season and place.

Photo courtesy of Jen Catto.

With two levels of passenger seating, the new Airbus A380 super jet is bigger than anything we civilians have seen yet. Yesterday, Airbus officially delivered its first A380 to Singapore Airlines.

A typical A380 with three cabin classes accommodates a whopping 525 passengers. Take out the first and business classes and make the plane all economy, and that number of passengers soars to over 800 (imagine that boarding process!). By 2011, this plane will be able to take off and land in 70 airports around the world.

Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member alancf.

According to the Los Angeles Times, lost luggage may be a thing of the past. A new technology, already in use at Hong Kong International Airport and McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, promises a most efficient way to track bags separated from their owners.

Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, uses a passive radio transponder embedded in a luggage tag that's put on your bag at check-in to track your bags. Other airports are looking into implementing RFID, though it's unlikely any will do so before the busy holiday season, when an increase in air travelers means an increase in mishandled luggage.

The current system, which uses bar codes, is imperfect, as any of the thousands of passengers who lost their bags last summer can attest to. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, nearly 8% of luggage was mishandled this past August -- down slightly from the previous August, but no consolation to anyone who spent three days in the same underwear.

As a seasoned San Franciscan, I can tell you a lot about the Golden Gate Bridge. I can also talk your ears off on the subjects of crooked Lombard Street, funky Haight-Ashbury, our fleet of highly polished retro-chic cable cars, or even eccentric local legends Emperor Norton and Frank Chu.

Benjamin Franklin once said: “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days." Granted, this is the same man who wanted the turkey to be our national bird and who nearly electrocuted himself with a kite, but he had a point.

I traveled to Manhattan last week, where a friend graciously let me be a couch commando for six straight days. This arrangement saved me roughly $2,400 (or 240 Benjamins), a figure that weighed heavily on my mind. I lived in New York for four years and I know first-hand how your sofa can develop a revolving door, and how all your obscure aunts, uncles, and half-cousins show up claiming kinship. So I learned a thing or two about what not to do when staying with someone.

Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member vondrejech

One need not look too hard to find some article declaring the impotence of the American educational system in teaching any semblance of geography to its students. In grade school, we had a relatively rigorous geography class which included anything from being able to draw and label every African country on a blank outline of the continent—and include capital cities—to knowing what was the most susceptible country to cyclones and what its main export was. The answer was Bangladesh, and jute. I never thought I’d have much use for the info. Well, to be honest, aside from being able to say “jute” more than I thought I ever would, I don’t. However, I thought I was fairly well-versed in the world, able to identify my place, and the place of other places, within it.

Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member SFPhotocraft

I have an image burned in my mind that may haunt me for years to come, and that is of my parents bopping to Ludacris.

That view eclipsed the foliage this weekend as the three of us drove to New Hampshire for a visit with family. Traveling with the folks as an adult can be rewarding (and, clearly, eye-opening): besides the rapping incident, I rekindled my appreciation of American history after my dad, a self-styled Ben Franklin expert, led me on a Philadelphia walking tour last year. And from my mom, there is my appreciation of girls’ weekends and good deals from when the two of us would steal away to the Blue Ridge Mountains for some relaxed antiquing without Dad to speed us along.

But traveling with your parents—especially when it involves 12 car hours in 2 days—isn’t a cakewalk, and there will be moments when your rebellious teenage years start to seem well-reasoned. Over the past few years, though, I’ve learned some tips that keep challenging moments to a minimum and your adolescence at bay.

Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member BawBaw

When you work in travel, you think about your next trip in the way they say men think about sex. You find yourself all too often in that dreamy, conceptual state when you imagine where your next trip might be, when it might happen, and how you’ll feel when you get there. You float from place to place in your daydreams, read long-form travel journalism, meditate on the filming locations of every movie you see, and admire that friend-of-a-friend’s latest set of Flickr photos from some far-flung place. So when an acquaintance recently departed on a multi-year traveling spree—just weeks after I’d finished reading Eat, Pray, Love, the summer bestseller about a writer who spends a year in Italy, India, and Bali—I began to seek an outlet for my constant state of wanderlust.

Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member meadlowlark

But no cash please. More and more airlines are moving towards a cashless in-flight experience, according to the Los Angeles Times. Seems that it's not enough to make you pay for things that were once free, but now the airlines want to tell you how to pay too.

Something fairly strange happened to me the other day. I showed up to the airport for a quick commuter flight to L.A., and the plane was delayed.

No, no--that wasn't the strange part (if only!) The strange part was that the agent checking me in said "oh dear, seems like your flight won't be taking off at 8:08pm as scheduled, but at 9:54pm instead. But don't worry, we can get you on another flight before then."

Curious, right? I mean, an unprompted offer by an airline employee to make up for poor service before I could even complain about it? Unheard of! But it actually gets curiouser. Curiouser and curiouser, in fact.

I’m a little homesick this week. Not because I miss Momma's cookin’ or the familiarity of home but because Saturday marks a very important day in the lives of true Texans: Texas-OU Weekend.

The rivalry between the Longhorns and the Sooners runs deep. It’s a fairly strong hatred, really. Legend has it that way back in the day, the annual Texas-Oklahoma game brought together oil people from the two states. Back then, it was a nonconference game, but the fans still took their football seriously. Doing what billionaires do, these guys made what most would call pretty hefty bets – they put their oil wells on the line! Ah! The plot thickens! And so does the animosity between the two teams.

Karaoke might be the perfect ice breaker for travelers. Whereas 100 years ago, travelers used to gather around the inn piano for a good old-fashioned singalong, we now can find an instant sense of camaraderie beneath disco lights and the LCD screen. Plus, even if you’re a total bomb at the mic, the beauty of karaoke on vacation is that you never have to see any of your audience again.

Today you can find karaoke almost everywhere (except for North Korea, where they banned it in July). Finland, of all places, holds the world record for the most people singing karaoke together at one time (imagine 80,000 people singing heavy-metal hit “Hard Rock Hallelujah” in an attempt to usher in the “arockalypse” to Helsinki).

Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member angelsil.