The Sunday Round-Up | September 26, 2021

Greetings! There's a ton of travel news, deals and tips this week so please scroll down to read it all, including the only way to get airplane passengers to behave, why you should buy your holiday airfares now and how to pay it forward to ensure that the next guest in your hotel room gets clean sheets.


As you can see from the photo above, my family and I just returned from the desert. We rented a house in Palm Springs via Vrbo, which was amazing. I will tell you all about it next week. 

We spent a lot of time indoors since a couple of days were really hot (108F). On Friday, the temperature dropped drastically so we went to nearby Joshua Tree National Park for the first time. On the way there, we stopped at a town and even though you've probably never heard of it, I can almost guarantee you've seen it in movies, TV shows or commercials. Here's more info and some of our photos.

It's quite remarkable that both of these places are just a two-hour drive from Los Angeles but feels like a world away. 

UPDATE: My dad is doing great after his bout with COVID! There is some news so I've updated the post. Thank you again for all of the kind words, support, prayers and love. 
 

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12 Things 
— Yesterday's TSA checkpoint numbers
— Amtrak Derailment: At least 50 hurt in Montana 
— William Shatner's going to space on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket ship
— Airport reopens on Spanish island roiled by volcano eruption
— Hospitals running out of ICU beds in states with low vaccination rates
— Mars probe records a big hour-and-a-half Martian quake
— In 4,385 air rage incidents, only one person criminally charged
— Five-star hotel accepts bitcoin and ethereum in bid to woo luxury ‘clients of the future’, but is it just a gimmick?
— Airbus created a new plane concept with wings modeled off how eagles soar designed to increase efficiency
— Man claims family was kicked off flight because flight attendant didn’t like comment wife made to him (msn.com)
— Photos: Ruff waves at the annual dog surfing competition in Huntington Beach
— Travel + Leisure reveals World's Best Awards, and the top-ranked U.S. city is...
Read it all here in today's travel news round-up as well as the 84 other top travel news stories from this past week!