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"Internet Makes Travel a BreezeVacation season is in full swing, but there's still plenty of time to make plans even for this year. If you want a tour package that includes special events and sights or you, or you aren't comfortable unless you talk to someone in person, you'll be better off working with a travel agent. But if all you need are a couple of airline tickets, a rental car and/or a place to stay, you can do it yourself online with ease.One of the most popular travel sites is Expedia Travel (www.expedia.com), where you can create your own trip by listing your departure and destination points, dates of travel and number of folks who'll be tagging along. You can also get flight status, travel alerts and airport information. Other reliable sites include Travelocity (www.travelocity.com). I once bought a round-trip ticket to Dallas for my husband here; it arrived in less than a week and he encountered no problems thereafter. Another is Orbitz (www.orbitz.com).Priceline.com, too, can't be ignored; if it's good enough for Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, it's good enough for me. Don't miss the weekend and last-minute packages section. Still other sites for good deals are Hotels.com, CheapTickets.com and CheapRooms.com.But be aware that Web sites aren't always the cheapest. A study published in the July issue of Consumer Reports found that three out of four times, the best rates came from contacting hotels directly -- but you must be willing to haggle.Unless your idea of a wonderful vacation is holed up in your room with a book, the more you know about the weather, the better. For that, you can't beat The Weather Channel (www.weather.com). The vacation planner lets you check monthly averages at the destination of your choice.Seven-day forecasts are particularly helpful; being forewarned means we can drag along fewer suitcases since we don't need to plan for extreme variations in temperature.Another neat feature is Desktop Weather, which offers free instant access to the current temperature and severe weather alerts on your PC. If you've got a Internet-enabled cellular phone, PDA or OnStar in your vehicle, you can get many services and alerts for these devices as well.Even if you have a travel agent, you can use the Web for research. We've been to North Carolina's Outer Banks 20 times now, but this summer, we wanted different things to see and do. In short order, hubby found several possibilities. Most attractions list hours and costs, so we didn't worry about driving 30 miles to an aquarium only to find it's closed.Chambers of commerce and visitors' bureaus are a great place to start. As a local example, check the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber (www.regionalchamber.com), which offers everything from shopping spots to a calendar of events to a community "tour." Another local example is the Trumbull County Convention and Visitors Bureau (www.trumbullcountycvb.org).To find these organizations, use a search engine like Google (www.google.com) or Dogpile (www.dogpile.com). A search for Outer Banks Chamber on Dogpile, for instance, turned up 80 related links, including the chamber's. In case anybody out there still doesn't know this, when you're looking for an exact word or phrase, enclosing it in quotation marks will narrow the results. Having a map of the area you're visiting is helpful as well. Before you go, visit Mapquest (www.mapquest) and make a printout of what you need -- click on the "Map" icon at the top of the page."