I shoulda been a travel agent

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

Yippee! Summer is almost over. No, I'm not looking forward to icy roads, icy sidewalks, icy winds, icy temperatures. That, I hope, is well into the future. In the meantime, we have my favorite season. I love the autumn. ("Fall" sounds rather treacherous to us Boomers, doesn't it?) I love the cooler temperatures, the brilliant tree colors, the woodsmoke tang in the air. Mostly, I love vacation.

Since our daughters have reached the age of majority and well beyond, we no longer have to plan our vacations around their activities. My husband is retired, so we only have to do dueling vacations at the library. Therefore, we are able to plan many of our R&R (he was military for 20+ years) escapades with an eye on the mystery lovers convention calendar.

Malice Domestic in the spring, New England Crime Bake in November, the Society of Children's Bookwriters and Illustrators--these are ladies'-weekend-out-conventions, shared with my writing partner rather than my marriage partner. These don't involve a lot of planning: hotel reservations: check. Train/plane reservations: check. Pay the conference fee and figure out how to get from the terminal (air or rail) to the hotel. Done!

Left Coast Crime in the winter and Bouchercon in the early fall are another matter. My spouse is not a real mystery fiction fan, but he is game for trips that revolve around crime scene investigations, blood spatter patterns, panels on mystery series vs. stand-alones, character development, and discussions on the use of humor in grim circumstances. So far I've lured him to Philadelphia, Austin and Denver for Bouchercons, Monterey and Anchorage for Left Coast Crime cons.

Next up: a return to Anchorage for B'con. As usual, we are planning a longer trip to Alaska. We're looking forward to three weeks in The Last Frontier.

We're not much on crowds, so we're putting together our own Alaska sampler. That is the "editorial we." I spend many weeks with piles of guidebooks, maps, sample itineraries like the one Dana Stabenow  put on the B'con site, articles from the New York Times and the Boston Globe, plus many, many printouts from internet sites.  My husband's role consists of nodding,  insisting that he did too look at the stuff I piled up for him, and making a reservation call now and then (but only for places we can't book online).

At first I wasn't sure this trip would work. Many things close in Alaska on Labor Day, a lot more by mid-September. What would be open for us to see? Would we be able to afford it? We'd have to buy new hiking boots, binoculars, and some single-use cameras to supplement the digital photography.  And everything--lodging, decent souvenirs, gas, car rental, meals--would be so expensive.

As the trip has come together, though, I have been first amazed and then dumbfounded and finally a little scared that the puzzle is fitting together beautifully. We both have odd feet but were able to find excellent hiking books in our sizes--on sale! We found the last pair of binoculars at a sporting good store--so they gave us a 10% discount on the display pair. We found another pair of binoculars at a huge discount store--and got another $20 off because the price tag was wrong. We saved about half on the airfare by booking a year ahead.

Iditarod Champion Jeff King is my hero, but his kennel tours end in "mid-September." We booked the last one of the season. Denali National Park closes in "mid-September." We signed on for a tour on the last day. The big, expensive park lodges close in "mid-September." We got a room for two nights at a 75% discount for "military appreciation." In Fairbanks we have seats on about the last river paddleboat tour and the last railroad gold mine tour of the year. Yet we're arriving late enough in September that we may well see the Aurora Borealis in Fairbanks.

Scary. But I'm having a ball putting together itineraries, reservations in B&B's with hot tubs on the deck overlooking a lake on the Kenai peninsula. I'm amassing confirmation e-mails and numbers, correspondence with various travel types, and I've had a great time talking with people all over southern Alaska. By the time we're ready to leave in early September, I should have it winnowed down to a large folder and a notebook.

And I will not make the mistake I made with our detailed directions and folders for the trip driving to B'con in Austin (another 3-week trip). We forgot to take it with us. The kids had to overnight it to us in San Antonio.