By the end of the year, you will need either an enhanced driver license or a passport in order to board an airplane. This has been coming for some time and has been extended to cover 2018. Keep this in mind when you renew your license, and ask that you receive the enhanced variety.  Having this will also allow you to cross the Canadian border in a car or on a ship (still need a passport to fly across).

While you are at it, you might want to look into TSA-Precheck. This is a nice luxury that mostly allows you to go through screening faster and easier. You don’t have to take off your shoes, take your laptop out, pull out your 3-1-1 liquids, take off your belt or a light jacket. You attach your TSA number to your airline reservation. It is then printed out on your boarding pass and you are allowed into that special lane at security.

It is very easy to get the TSA number, but it takes a bit of maneuvering.  You go online to the TSA website (www.tsa.gov/precheck) and complete the applicable form and schedule a date and time for your in-person interview. Take your passport, birth certificate, enhanced driver license or other government-issued ID and head out for your interview. You may schedule in Fife at the IdentoGo office in the Pacific Plaza (kind of across from BJ’s Bingo) at 4500 Pacific Hwy. E. suite D. They are open Monday-Friday from 8-12 and 12:30-4:30. Cost is $85 for the five-year pass.  You can go there without an appointment, but then you will definitely have to wait. It took me about five minutes before they called my name when I got mine.

Now you are ready to travel so much easier. Look into the trips we have right here in the U.S., such as the four-day coastal cruise on Holland America departing May 1 from San Diego to Vancouver, or the May 25 Collette tour of historical homes in New England, an exploration of Wyoming on a road trip the end of August, or the Albuquerque Balloon Festival on Oct. 7.  We even have space with American Cruise Lines for a Mississippi River cruise on Nov. 11.

There is still room on the July Alaska cruises. We have one July 1 for 14 days which includes a seven-day land tour of Mt. McKinley/Denali and Talkeetna, and another on July 29 which is a seven-day round-trip out of Seattle.

Our latest “trip of a lifetime” is in October 2019 with a nine-day Viking River Cruise from Prague to Paris.  This then hooks up to a seven-day cruise of Normandy.  Reservations become tight on these small boats, so make plans early and join us on these exciting trips.

Join our e-mail list and learn about day trips in and around our area. There is still space available for the tulips on April 19, and plans for into the summer will continue to come out.

For reservations and further information, contact Linda Finch at 253-927-8207 or linda.finch@gmail.com.