Four Days, Four Hundred Dollars

I just saved almost $400 by moving my travel plans up by four days.

I'm making plans for what I hope is becoming an annual visit to Liguria, Italy where a good friend hosts a revolving set of visitors in a vacation home the the use of which he has for two weeks every spring.  This year the drop-in period is the first two weeks of June.

I find Pisa to be the most convenient airport for this region (the house is near the Cinque Terre on the coast near La Spezia) because there's a train station at the airport terminal, and because Delta offers non-stop flights from JFK at convenient times.  Unfortunately, the flight is expensive — $869 round-trip leaving the first week of June.

Last year there were a few days when my friend and I were the only people in the house, so we took an ad hoc road trip to Florence and Lucca.  This year I was considering spending a few days on my own touring another part of Italy — the time spent in Liguria is fantastic but there's so much Italy there, and this is the only time of the year I travel without my family.

My inclination, I'm not sure why, was to spend a week or so in Liguria then a few days traveling.  Fortunately, however, before I booked my flight I noticed a mention on one of the many budget travel blogs I read (was it Arthur Frommer's excellent site?) about good fares for the period ending May 26th (I had been planning to fly May 30th).  By moving my solo travel days to the start of my trip, I got my airfare down from $869 to $500.  The savings will easily cover my hotel and transportation costs for the three nights I'll be on my own.

A good example of how a little flexibility can lead to a lot of savings.  Unfortunately I don't have even that much flexibility with most family travel — school vacation is school vacation, and it's no good trying to move it backwards or forwards by more than a single day.

Hidden America — Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park

A few days ago I posted about Great Sand Dunes National Park, a little-known treasure of the National Park system in southern Colorado.  If Great Sand Dunes is known to few, then Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in southwestern Utah is known to almost no one.

The dunes at Great Stand Dunes are much higher than the ones at Coral Pink Sand Dunes, but the at the latter the sand is a brilliant salmony pinkish-orange color.  This park is not far from Bryce Canyon National Park with its famous eroded red rock formations, but here the erosion is already complete.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes is a convenient stop if you're traveling between the north rim of the Grand Canyon and the Bryce / Zion / Escalante area.  There's a campground at the park.  The nearest town is Kanab, Utah. 

I've been there twice.   One time we had the place to ourselves, the other time there were two other cars there.  At one end of the dunes is an area in which off-road vehicles are allowed, but as long as you stay out of that area you're likely to have the place to yourself.