Need opinions on what the weather is like on the mountain driving from oregon to vegas!?|145777

I am planning a trip to vegas and would like to drive straight down 1-5 end of march..do you think i would make it ok over the mountains in a mazda 3? i would be coming from portland...or does anyone have a different route that might be better? thanks!

You should be fine. I drove up there 4x_s with my grandma in her Honda Accord. Around the same time of year, beginning of April.

Check with tripcheck.com - it will give up-to-date road conditions.

Where can we honeymoon with a budget of $1500 including airfare?|121804

My fiance and I are getting married August 10th, 2008. We are from the Portland, Oregon area and we are trying to find a place to go on our honeymoon with a budget of about $1500. We want to go somewhere warm, with nice beaches and other activities that will keep us entertained. I have never been on a vacation, please help.

for plane tickets:
These sites have several services that slice and dice your flight inquiries in any number of ways. They can search one-way trips, round trips, each leg of the trip, by price, by date, by time, and by multiple airports. And they can bake a cherry pie. They can do it all. They typically also offer services to alert you to when low fares for desired routes become available or to examine baseline fares offered by airlines throughout the year. Travelocity.com has airplane seat maps for 13 airlines, in case you want to choose your seat too. Many trip planning sites also have hotel room finders and car rental options. Cheaptickets.com has a Fare Aware option that shows what other passengers paid for a certain trip at the same time last year. For the top 1,000 routes in the United States, the service shows the average price, average number of passengers, what a one-way trip costs, the airline that flies that route the most often, and the low-fare courier rate. While some sites do international flights too, others such as Yahoo! only search within the Continental US, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

One other great thing about these Internet sites is that you can often find sweet deals at the last minute. If you want to fly on a whim for the weekend, this is really the best route to go.

Popular sites include:


www.expedia.com
www.travelocity.com
www.travel.americanexpress.com
travel.yahoo.com
www.cheaptickets.com
www.webflyer.com
At www.smartertravel.com, you can do all of the above but also sign up for a weekly email with cheap fares available for the coming weekend from airports you can access. Its flight search option shows all flights leaving the day you are interested in but when you click on the price, you are bounced over to www.expedia.com. It also advertises the latest travel bargains and ongoing airline sales.

Auction sites

These fall into two categories: the typical auction and reverse auctions. At an auction site, the seller (either a company or an individual) puts an item up for sale to the highest bidder. At reverse auctions, individuals specify the price they will pay for a seat and the airlines either agree to the price or not.

Reverse auction sites include www.priceline.com and www.expedia.com, a Microsoft-owned travel site that has a feature enabling customers to name their price. These sites are fantastic because you can choose your own price, and you might get the ticket. So all you do is sign on, say where you want to leave from and where you want to go, what dates you plan to travel on, and how much you_re willing to pay. The drawbacks are that: 1) you have to put in your credit card number before you know about the exact times of flight, so you_re stuck with whatever you get, and 2) you often have to fly at crazy hours. But if you_re looking for cheap and you_re flexible, this is a great way to go.

Regular auction sites include SkyAuction.com, which sells available airline tickets and vacation packages. While you can_t punch in your destination of choice, the sellers may have tickets to the very Caribbean island you have been dreaming about all winter.

Airline sites

Finally, one way to use the Internet to check for prices is to go to the airline sites directly. All major airlines (and the smaller ones too) have their own web presence where you can book flights. Many airlines have lower fares that you can only get when you book online or when you buy an e-ticket (a paperless ticket). So don_t overlook them when searching for fares. Use any search engine, such as www.yahoo.com or www.altavista.com, and enter the airline of your choice to get to its site. But let us warn you that the best deals usually come from auction sites, or consolidators, or special deals. Going to the airline itself should be a last resort.

While the Internet travel sites are unbeatable resources that enable you to see the range of available prices, there is no one site that can guarantee the lowest fare -- no matter what they advertise. A recent search for flights from Boston to Toronto, Canada, on the above sites turned up _lowest fares_ ranging from $222 to $500 at a variety of times and airlines. And we_re sure that if we surfed for a couple more hours, we could have found a lower rate. The moral of the story: the more time you spend researching, the lower the rate you_ll get.

There are some drawbacks to using the Internet. One is that most sites want you to register with them, which means filling out a registration form and thinking up a password that you won_t forget. If you can, use the same name and password for all the sites so that you don_t forget. Another hassle is entering your pertinent information. There are zillions of boxes to be filled out, so be prepared for some busy work. Once you_ve registered, you_ll probably get constantly bombarded with e-mails from those sites. Those are beyond annoying. A final drawback is the lack of precision in some of the searches. You may have specified you want to leave at 8 p.m. and the site will show you flights leaving at 6 a.m. This is because the 6 a.m. flight is available. But for those who want to keep all of their options open, it is a boon in the search for rock-bottom fares.

I would go to maui, hawaii, or any of the other islands, besides o_ahu since it is a city and has tons of tourists. you cant get better than that if you like warm beaches, plus its easy cuz its part of the USA! so is puerto rico, but I havn_t been there. I heard some parts are nice.

if you really want to do it cheap i_d suggest camping on the beach, and by a bottle of wine instead of going to a bar.

you can stay at someone_s house for free via the website www.couchsurfing.com, but most of the houses dont have private rooms available, not very honeymooney, but im sure you can make it romantic!
then theres cheap motels

good luck to you and may you have a forfilling marriage.

I would definitely look into package deals, preferably packages that are all inclusive (includes air, hotel, meals). You will get the most for your money that way. You can probably get some good deals in Mexico at Cancun, Cozumel or someplace like that. Go to:

http://www.orbitz.com/
and click on Vacation packages and check out what they have for the dates you have in mind.
Good luck and I hope you have a happy wedding and a great honeymoon!

The two places that come to mind is LA/San Diego or Las Vegas. Check sites like southwest airlines vacation, united airlines vacation, priceline or travelocity. If you decide to go to Las Vegas, book directly from the hotels on the Vegas strip using promotion codes. Here are a few.
http://www.lasvegas-how-to.com/special.h��

If you decide to go to Southern California, consider booking a tour of LA/Hollywood or San Diego/Tijuana Mexico. Here are more information on that.

http://www.socalthemeparks.com/southern-��

What is the best to acquire property in Waikiki or Honolulu?|143938

I_ve been researching properties for leasehold and fee simple. I do not have much money, but want to find a small condo or studio in the West Waikiki or Honolulu. Possibly a fixer-upper as inexpensively as possible. Want to use it as a personal vacation space and hopefully a _turn-key_ place when not in use by me. Any sound advice as to how to go about this? Any advice is appreciated. Thank you!

Century 21 is a good co. for reasonably priced real estate. They have a good reputation in Hawaii.
http://honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.��

page

http://starbulletin.com/classifieds/isla��

e_houses_cs.html
Hawaii Real Estate Condo - Hawaii Classified Ads - Honolulu Star ..

http://www.hawaiimoves.com/content/homep��

GOOD LUCK! I highly doubt that you will find anything reasonble priced, for the price you would pay, you could buy yourself a mansion. I would stick to time shares. there are waiting lists for people just wanting to buy. and be willing to pay the price even though they know that they cant afford it.. instead of waikiki or even oahu period, I would look to a different island, like the Big Island.. Im from Oahu and I know that if i was still living there, owning a home would be impossible, but I moved to the Big Island and was able to afford a nice house. Like i said try time share. go online to ebay, type in timeshares, this is the best way, you can find really good deals

Work with an agent experienced in just what you are looking for. They have all the inside information on fees you will have to pay to have your _vacation condo_ managed and their success rate (occupancy rate). Since you are being careful with your money be careful about the agent you choose.

Having just been through the experience of buying a place in Hawaii as a vacation home/vacation rental, let me offer the following.
1) If you intend to use it as a vacation rental you have to be concerned with location and if vacationers will want to rent it. Waikiki and the North Shore are popular for these reasons but the price reflects this. A 2 bedroom _fixer upper_ in Waikiki costs about $400k when I was there earlier this year. Plan on putting a lot more into it to make it acceptable to people who are paying good money to rent it. They don_t want to hear about your financial difficulties when the stove doesn_t work.
2) Property managers will take anywhere from 20% to 50% of the rental income depending on what servcies they provide. Figure that into the general operating costs as simply gone.
3) Don_t forget taxes, insurance, condo fees, down payment in addition to the actual mortgage for the condo.
4) I wouldn_t believe the occupancy rates that the property managers claim.
5) The state of Hawaii has stopped issuing non-conforming use certificates for condos to be rented on a short term basis. The ones that are operating now are either grandfathered in as mine is at $200 per year, or they are operating without a license. If caught, the one_s without a license can be fined thousands per day.

It_s not for the faint of heart or someone who is cutting the budget closely. Some months are harder to rent than others so you have to be able to absorb the expenses during the lean times.

Good luck

Aloha,

If you are looking for a place to rent out ? Or have a property manager run for you_

Then I would only recommend Waikiki.

Most people do not realize a couple of things about Oahu. It is all Honolulu. Like many other large cities, it has cities within itself. (Like Los Angeles or New York)
The main city of Honolulu, is about 6 miles from Waikiki. but any small homes and Condos of all types surround Honolulu, where as Waikiki is a 2 miles by about 6 blocks of very Denise built up area, almost 75% is Hotels, Resorts, Condos and a few private homes.
Waikiki has many places where you can buy a Condo even with in the big Resorts who now sales many of their rooms as condos and still operate them as hotel rooms