Other Travel and Trip Planning Resources

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Hotels

• We book many of our hotels on Hotels.com. Often, we're visting places not well covered by chains. Having Hotels.com's loyalty program (you get 10% back on every 10 hotel stays as a "free night" you can use for a future booking) is a plus. Most hotels have free cancellation.
• Booking.com seems to have better coverage in some regions -- e.g., Europe and South America. It also has great coverage of bed and breakfasts.

Gear

• If we need to try something on -- or need at last minute -- we'll go to REI. We can't always justify paying their prices, though.
• For online ordering, we typically buy from Moosejaw. They have competitive, a pretty good rewards program, free shipping over a certain value or with Shoprunner, and, for better or for worse, I enjoy their marketing materials.
• We'll admit that we buy a lot of our outdoor gear and consumables on Amazon.