NEW YORK CITY TO ERIE, PA
After last week's fantastic trip to Nantucket I traveled back to New York City, so I could catch my flight home to California the following day. But at the last minute my sister Carol talked me into changing my plans once again. So instead of being on a plane to L.A., I was pricing out tickets to Carol's summer house in Erie, PA (yee haw!). I love spending time with Carol and her family, but my real reason for going to the border of the Midwest was to see my dad. I felt bad because he had only a few hours to spend with us when he was in Connecticut the week before (he couldn't travel to Nantucket with us because he had to go move into his new house in Erie, with his new wife Nancy. My sister Carol hooked him up with Nancy (she was my sister's neighbor) after my mom passed away.

ALTERNATE AIRPORTS
Airfares to Erie can be ridiculously expensive: $286 to/from LaGuardia for a last-minute one way ticket. That's more than a ticket to California, and Erie is five times closer. Is that ridiculous or what? That's what happens when there is no low-fare carrier serving a city. Fortunately, Erie does have a good selection of alternate airports that are serviced by low-fare carriers (here's a helpful page I made to find Alternate Airports). Erie's alternate airports are Pittsburgh (134 miles away), Cleveland (112 miles) and Buffalo (105 miles). We flew JetBlue into Buffalo, then drove 90 minutes to Erie. Purchasing tickets far in advance with a low-fare carrier like jetBlue is the way to go � seats can be as cheap as $59 one way. They usually go up closer to departure. I bought mine a few hours before takeoff, and paid top dollar ($150). But that was not nearly as bad as what the legacy carriers (American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, USAir and United) would've reamed me for.

JETBLUE TO BUFFALO
We flew out of New York's JFK (JetBlue also has a small percentage of flights out of LaGuardia and Newark). If you're unfamiliar with JetBlue (where have you been hiding?), they don't offer food -- only chips, cookies and drinks. But they do have fine food options to bring on the plane in their JFK terminal. Also in JFK's Terminal 6, JetBlue offers free wireless internet. That's key for a computer junkie like me. Why can't other airlines do the same? I normally feel lucky if I get a hot spot that costs $6 an hour, but JetBlue does a lot of the little things right. I haven't even mentioned that they have one of the friendliest staffs around. And best of all: They offer 36 channels of live TV on individual monitors in the seatbacks. That makes any flight go by real quick � especially when traveling with kids, or on a short 55-minute flight like ours. JetBlue; tel.: 800-538-2583. For more click HERE.