Since Harlee was still potty training, she brought extra towels and clothes for accidents. The final step was handing Harlee her Baby Yoda doll once she settled into her car seat. Rainey had sewed a port in the doll’s chest to mirror the one Harlee has in hers. About three hours from Memphis, Harlee was crying inconsolably. Rainey pulled off the interstate and stopped at the first hotel she could find. “I didn’t know the area,” she said. “The hotel was garbage. The drive home also required a hotel stop, but this time Rainey was able to find one that was cleaner. A $100 donation from a local charity helped to offset the cost. Among the changes St. Jude is making is to reimburse families like Rainey’s, who live more than 400 miles from the hospital, for an overnight stay at a hotel when making the trip to Memphis. Rainey said she was called by a St. Jude representative after ProPublica asked about her situation and was told the hospital would pay for her past hotel stays when traveling back and forth to St. Jude.
You can find photos and info at HipLodge. Want to know which songs will be on repeat when you get to your destination? Apple Music City Charts can tell you the most-listened-to songs in over 100 places across the country. And some tourism boards have curated playlists designed to capture the feel of a place. There are playlists for Nashville, Tenn., and New Orleans, of course-but did you know you can download songs that capture the essence of New York’s Finger Lakes? Big crowds are expected at national parks and other popular spots this summer, but you can often find breathtaking alternatives nearby. For example, if you can’t get a peak-hours reservation for California’s Yosemite National Park, you can search by state at the National Park Service website and find another option about 90 minutes away: Devils Postpile National Monument and its 101-foot Rainbow Falls. Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in the July 2022 issue of Consumer Reports magazine. Keith Barry has been an auto reporter at Consumer Reports since 2018. He focuses on safety, technology, and the environmental impact of cars. Previously, he led home and appliance coverage at Reviewed; reported on cars for USA Today, Wired, and Car & Driver; and wrote for other publications as well. Keith earned a master’s degree in public health from Tufts University. Follow him on Twitter @itskeithbarry.
Technology has changed the way the world interacts and selling travel is no exception. The travel agent software available today has automated and customized the entire booking process while providing comprehensive and innovative solutions for travel agents to serve their customers better. There are solutions available today for travel agents that will make the entire shopping and booking process quicker and easier for themselves as well as for their customers. For example, currently planning and booking a cruise can be a long process and generally involves multiple online and offline steps. It starts with online research which may involve cruise line websites, cruise reviews, online travel companies and social media applications. Many of today’s consumers shopping for a cruise seek advice from friends and family before they visit and/or talk to a traditional travel agent or call a cruise line representative. And online is no longer limited to using a desktop or laptop with many initial cruise searches were conducted on mobile devices.
What Russia called the Great Patriotic War had begun. Initially, three Nazi German army groups — comprised of some 120 divisions — swiftly overwhelmed the Red Army’s front-line defenses and struck deep into Soviet territory. However, despite the Wehrmacht’s early successes, Operation Barbarossa eventually proved to be Adolf Hitler’s greatest strategic mistake, for he had badly underestimated the Soviet Union’s military-industrial capability, its geography, and its environment. Slavery, starvation, and death for Soviet POWs: The Belorussian city of Minsk fell to the encircling advances of the Second and Third Panzer Groups on June 28, 1941, just six days after the start of Operation Barbarossa. During that week, panzer units captured more than 200,000 Soviets. Large numbers of those prisoners were transported in railway coal trucks from Minsk to Poland, where they would be interned or possibly moved on to camps further west. Thereafter, they probably would be used as slave labor while routinely experiencing deliberate maltreatment and appalling living conditions. Two-thirds of all Soviet POWs would be worked, starved, or shot to death.
