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DAY 1 I knew mid-September would be iffy in terms of weather, but I didn't expect this. After plowing into the Carolinas, a hurricane is heading to Cape Cod. My wife, Jessica, and I were willing to put up with some rain in exchange for quiet days and no crowds--but ahurricane? I gaze at our 2-year-old, William, certain that parents all over Massachusetts are clucking their tongues. We drove up from New Jersey the night before, knowing that the storm was somewhere in the Atlantic. Crossing over the Sagamore Bridge onto the Cape, all I could see was mist and the hazy headlights of cars going the other way. Were hardy New Englanders really fleeing? The parking lot atThe Corsair & Cross Rip, a complex of motels and house rentals in Dennisport where we had reservations, was full, a good sign. The office was closed, a not-so-good sign. Then I noticed an envelope on the door with our last name. Inside was a handwritten welcome note, requesting that I pop in the next morning for a proper check-in. By mid-morning, the consensus on TV is that by the time it reaches the Cape, the storm will be a tropical storm with plenty of rain and wind, but nothing that'll rip off rooftops. At present the skies are gray, but dry, so we decide to get outside and start exploring. Over apple pancakes and coffee atThe Breakfast Room, the conversations all revolve around the weather. "Sometimes it'll be raining here and blue skies on the other side of the Cape," our waitress says, "so we'll head to the beach there." On a map, the Cape resembles an arm making a muscle; with no particular destination in mind, we head to the top of the biceps. When signs for Gray's Beach appear in Yarmouth Port, we follow them. Sure enough, the sun peeks out as we walk along the beach and a boardwalk over marshland, both at Bass Hole. As William tosses pebbles into the water, I breathe in the salty air and feel better about not calling off the trip. It's so quiet we can hear the gulls flapping their wings. A drizzle turns us back to the car and toHallet's Store, a museum-quality soda fountain dating to 1889. It's not even noon, so I decide against ordering a sundae and settle instead for a bottle of Hallet's homemade root beer to drink in the car. With the rain picking up, we seek indoor activities and wind up atThe Brewster Store, another quaint, rickety throwback, constructed as a church more than 150 years ago. Now it's a general store with a nickelodeon that plays songs for a quarter. We sit on a bench in front of the store, watching rain pound the road and sharing fudge, a whoopie pie, and animal crackers. William sticks with his crackers, roaring at each tiger he pulls out, and eyes my whoopie pie suspiciously. After I dab some pie cream onto his lips, he drops the animal crackers box. We polish off a carton of milk, and Jessica goes into the store for more. For lunch, we drive to Chatham to meet Jessica's brother Luke and his wife Susie, who have been on vacation celebrating their anniversary.The Chatham Squireis a fine place to dine with a toddler, in that it's generally loud and rowdy. At the bar, a silver-haired gentleman with a George Hamilton tan orders a cocktail amid a cackling crew of rugged-looking men in sleeveless shirts. Our waitress is friendly but indifferent, which I've heard is the way service always is here. As far as pub grub goes, the food's fantastic. We're all envious of the fish-and-chips Luke ordered--made with fresh cod, in healthy-size chunks--and he generously shares them with the table. We race past Chatham's cute stores in the rain and hunker down in our room. On TV, a lobsterman says that he's simply trying to get his boat and equipment "out of hahm's way." From our window, I see that the parking lot next door is flooding. Jessica pokes her head outside, where a CBS News truck and a reporter are taping a segment. I state the obvious: "That can't be good." Lodging The Corsair & Cross Rip41 Chase Ave., Dennisport, 800/345-5140, corsaircrossrip.com, suites from $145 Food Breakfast Room675 Rte. 28, West Dennis, 508/398-0581, apple pancakes $5 Hallet's Store139 Main St. (Rte. 6A), Yarmouth Port, 508/362-3362, hallets.com Chatham Squire487 Main St., Chatham, 508/945-0945, thesquire.com, fish and chips $15 Shopping Brewster Store1935 Main St., Brewster, 508/896-3744, brewsterstore.com DAY 2 Jessica and I are unabashed New England-philes. We love the classic villages and often fantasize about giving theThis Old Housetreatment to some weathered Victorian home in Vermont or Maine. Until that happens, we shop for home furnishings any time we're in New England. (Friends still make fun of us for driving--when Jessica was eight months pregnant--to Massachusetts to buy a couch.) We spend more than an hour atSnow's Home & Garden. I almost convince myself to pick up a couple of whiskey-barrel planters for the yard, before coming back to the reality that we'd have to leave behind our luggage or William's car seat to fit them in the car. A huge electric train display gets a big thumbs-up from Will. We find a few mementos that don't take up too much space atBird Watcher's General Store. I waver between a bird feeder that looks like a New England chapel and one that resembles a general store, before choosing the latter as a gift for my dad. Once we're back on the road, the sun is so bright that Jessica pulls over to dig shades out of her bag. Will falls asleep moments later; rather than wake him, we skip theWellfleet Flea Market, Cape Cod's biggest, in the parking lot of a drive-in theater. In Provincetown, we have some time to kill before our ride withArt's Dune Tours, so I duck into theLobster Potto sample the clam chowder, which is super creamy. I'm a little disappointed that our tour isn't in the funky old Suburban from the brochure--it's in a modern SUV instead--but the scenery on the hour-long loop, through the forest, along the beach, and over remote, bumpy dunes, is gorgeous. I carry Will, who fell asleep three-quarters of the way through the tour, to a bench in the middle of P'town. His eyes stay closed even when bikers rev their engines a few feet away. When he eventually wakes, we walk down Commercial Street, the wild main drag, peeking in the windows of S&M boutiques and shops dominated by two kinds of T-shirts: anti-New York Yankees and progressive ones like I (HEART) MY MOMS. I've never felt so utterly conventional. After hearing that my first two choices for tonight are full, I desperately book one of the Dewey Avenue Apartments sight unseen from theBreakwater Motel. The unit has two bedrooms and a long hallway that Will enjoys running down, but the ripped couches and stained carpets reveal a place that's been well partied in. As I'm looking at the rusted fixtures in the bathroom, Jessica asks, "You're not thinking about giving Will a bath in there, are you?" Only it's more of a command than a question. The apartment's location is its salvation. We walk out the door and through dune grass to a coarse beach. It's low tide, and clusters of people hunt for shells and play with their dogs hundreds of feet out from the usual shoreline. Will's not happy when the sun dips behind clouds and I tell him it's time for bed. Rather than wrestle with him the whole way back to the apartment, I make a game of it, touching my toes like a sprinter and counting to three before running a few strides. He's into it, sticking out both index fingers and counting with his unique method: "Two, two, two, goat!" For the record, I let him win. Lodging Breakwater Motel716 Commercial St., Provincetown, 800/487-1134, breakwatermotel.com, apartments from $140 Food Lobster Pot321 Commercial St., Provincetown, 508/487-0842, ptownlobsterpot.com, chowder $5 Activities Art's Dune Tours4 Standish St., Provincetown, 800/894-1951, artsdunetours.com, $21 Shopping Snow's Home & Garden22 Main St., Orleans, 508/255-0158, snowshomeandgarden.com Bird Watcher's General Store36 Rte. 6A, Orleans, 508/255-6974, birdwatchersgeneralstore.com Wellfleet Flea Market508/349-0541, wellfleetdrivein.com, car $1-$3 DAY 3 Mostly flat and less than a mile long, the pond loop of the Beech Forest Trail, off Race Point Road, is a refreshing way to start the day. The air is full of the sound of crickets, and around the first bend a frog jumps on a lily pad as if on cue. Back in Orleans for an early lunch, we drop by theOld Jailhouse Tavern, a jail turned upscale restaurant where the chicken pie is in a bread bowl the size of a softball. As an alternative to takeout, we like going to restaurants during slow times. I'm glad theMarshside Restaurantis mostly empty when we sit down at 5 P.M., because Will won't stay still even when we try to bribe him with French fries. The porch where we're seated, which has a picturesque marshland view, soon fills up, and though I have half a burger still on my plate I'm antsy to leave. We try not to reward bad behavior, but after having ice cream daily--we're on vacation, after all--I don't want to break the streak.The Ice Cream Smugglerturns out to be our favorite. With the sun fading, we head to Scargo Tower, in Dennis. It's a narrow cylinder built of large stones and mortar. The inside reeks, so I pick William up and run up the spiral staircase to the top. It's only 30 feet high, yet it has one of the Cape's best panoramas: an idyllic lake, where a lone fisherman drifts placidly in his rowboat, and, in the distance, Cape Cod Bay and the mainland. That night, at theKingfisher Lodgingmotel, our bed is the wobbliest I've ever slept on. Still, we're all relieved when the bathroom passes Jessica's inspection. Lodging Kingfisher Lodging177 Main St., Dennis, 800/341-5844, kingfisherlodging.com, from $55 Food Old Jailhouse Tavern28 West Rd., Orleans, 508/255-5245, jailhousetavern.com, chicken pie $11 Marshside Restaurant28 Bridge St., E. Dennis, 508/385-4010, burger platter $8.50 Ice Cream Smuggler716 Main St., Dennis, 508/385-5307, icecreamsmuggler.com DAY 4 When we drove by it days earlier, the parking lot at theRed Cottage was overflowing; something good was clearly happening inside. Today at 7 A.M., the counter is three-quarters occupied. Posters of the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights decorate the back wall, and each coffee mug is different. I'm the WORLD'S GREATEST TEACHER. The menu is overwhelming, with all sorts of extras added to breakfast standards. We go overboard: Jessica orders an omelet with the specialty home fries, which come with ham, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, and hollandaise; while I have the Very Berry waffle, covered in four kinds of berries and whipped cream. Almost immediately, we wish we'd ordered something simpler. We've been running around too much, and decide to relax at the beach before the drive home. Friends who go to the Cape every summer recommended Mayflower Beach, off Route 6A, in Dennis. When we pull our car into the empty parking lot, it's low tide, and we can walk out more than 500 feet. The sand is in little bumps that look like corduroy. I hike Will's jeans up, and watch the wet line slowly creep up them, before giving up and letting him splash around in just his diaper. There's a warm breeze, and we see maybe five people over the course of 45 minutes. On the walk back to the car, William stops and stares at us with a furrowed brow. Instead of the tantrum I expect, he smiles. Then he arches into a racing position, sticks out both index fingers, and says, "Two, two, two, goat!" Food Red Cottage36 Old Bass River Rd., South Dennis, 508/394-2923, waffle $8 Finding YourWay Most of the towns on Cape Cod publish helpful, digest-size tourist guides with maps and listings, available at hotels, restaurants, and shops. Rte. 6A is the slower, more scenic route that parallels the two-lane Rte. 6. Weekends, traffic is bad on Rte. 6 (and Rte. 28) from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and sometimes in the spring and fall. If you're flying in, consider Providence rather than dealing with Boston.

To celebrate our 10th anniversary, we're looking for a fantastic travel photograph taken from 1998 or later. The one we deem the best will be on the cover of the June issue! Any images submitted must have been shot by the person doing the submitting, and we will not accept more than five images per person. (Please don't submit if you're a professional photographer.) The submission deadline is December 31, 2007. You can mail us prints following the instructions below—but anything submitted will not be returned. By submitting a photo, you grant Budget Travel the right to use any submitted images online and in Budget Travel, as well as to promote Budget Travel in general. Technical specs Digital Images: Images should be vertical and have a required resolution of 300dpi at 9x12 inches or bigger, and must be submitted on CD. (Sorry, but our IT folks won't let us accept images that large by e-mail.) Film: Send only prints—no negatives or transparencies. Prints must be printed on photo paper. We'd prefer an 11x17 print, or you can send smaller ones as long as you still have the original negative or transparency. Send your photo, and your answers to the below questions, to:   Photo editor Budget Travel 530 Seventh Ave. 2nd Floor New York, NY 10018 646/695-6700 Please answer the following questions for each image: 1. When was it taken? 2. Where was it taken? 3. What brand and model camera did you use? (If you don't remember, don't sweat it.) 4. Any story behind the shot? Did anything interesting happen? 5. What's your name, phone number, and email? (We won't give it away!)

See this snow globe? It's the most coveted snow globe in the travel industry. That's because every fall, we hand out a select few as our Extra Mile Awards, celebrating the companies that have made travelers' lives easier, more enjoyable, and just plain better. (Previous winners have included Google for its mapping tools, Westin for being the first major hotel brand to go smoke-free, and Continental Airlines for its innovative online calendar showing award-seat availability.) Travel isn't exactly easy these days, and when someone dares to pull off a wonderful innovation, he or she deserves a hand. At Budget Travel, it's our privilege to lead the applause. Virgin America: The airline is introducing nifty new perks--and not just to first class. In August, the new low-cost U.S. airline Virgin America took flight with planes that are showcases of innovation. To start, coach seats boast 32 inches of legroom, an inch or two more than the industry standard for economy class. There's a USB jack at each coach seat and two 110-volt plugs for every set of three seats, so your gizmos won't run out of juice while you're in the air. Even more impressive are the nine-inch seat-back TVs (versus 6.8 inches on, say, JetBlue), which offer 18 channels for free--including CNN, ESPN, the Food Network, the Travel Channel, FX, and The Independent Film Channel--and 25 pay-per-view movies for $6 to $8 a pop. They also function as touch screens you can use to order food, paying by swiping your credit card. (A flight attendant delivers purchased items.) You can create playlists from a selection of 3,000 songs--and save them for your return flight--and there's even an instant-messaging service: You can communicate with other passengers using a small handheld keyboard (but only if the recipients choose to accept your messages). In yet another clever feature, each plane's windows are tinted to filter out certain light wavelengths, reducing glare. Kudos to Virgin America for offering these innovations to all of its passengers--even the ones in the rear section of the plane. The Virgin brand prides itself on firsts, and the new airline is the result of a strategy focused on customer service. "Our goal is to maximize comfort based on feedback," says Charles Ogilvie, director of inflight entertainment and partnerships. He's the man responsible for the airline's seat-back TVs. "You can send me an e-mail during your flight to tell me what you do and don't like." Despite appearances, Virgin America is not a subsidiary of Virgin Atlantic; it has licensed the name. Virgin America is based out of San Francisco, with nonstop flights to Los Angeles; New York City's JFK; Washington, D.C.'s Dulles; and Las Vegas (starting October 10). The airline plans on serving as many as 10 cities in its first year of operation, ramping up to 30 cities within five years' time. Farecast: Crunching the airfare and hotel numbers so you don't have to. Farecast is a new company that sheds some light on the traditionally difficult process of figuring out whether that deal you found is really any good. The website predicts whether fares on a route will rise or fall in the next week, and according to an independent audit, its forecasts are correct three out of four times. "We improve our calculations constantly to help make our advice more accurate," says president and CEO Hugh Crean. The predictions are free, and there's a $10 option to book the lowest fare in the upcoming week, whether it's the lowest fare available that day or an even better fare that may pop up. Farecast receives its fares from airline sites and online agencies, and it sends you to those sources for the actual booking. Now Farecast is taking on hotels, offering rate advice for major properties in 30 U.S. cities. Rather than predict rates, the site tells you if the rate is a good value when compared with the hotel's rate history and other factors. You plug in your dates and the hotel's location, and then add your wish list (such as preferred amenities). The site maps hotels that meet your criteria, along with the lowest rates available and advice on whether to book one or keep looking. Alamo Rent A Car: Self-serve kiosks allow renters to make a much quicker getaway. Renting a car has become a potentially grueling experience, because of the long lines that often greet travelers who are already exhausted from flying. Hoping to speed up this maddening process, Alamo Rent A Car introduced self-service kiosks last November--they're now at 57 of the company's U.S. locations. Customers with a credit card, a driver's license, and a reservation can skip the rental counter and use a touch-screen kiosk instead. "We realized that there were customers like myself who didn't want to wait in line just to talk to a desk agent," says Alamo's vice president of operations, John Murphy. "If people can handle checking themselves out at Home Depot, then we figured we could apply the same concept to rental cars." The decision to roll out the kiosks was in response to consumer demand (and complaints regarding waiting times). The machines have an average transaction time of two minutes--versus seven to eight minutes for talking to an agent (and that doesn't include waiting in line). An Alamo survey showed that nearly 90 percent of renters reported that not only would they use the kiosks again, but they'd also recommend that friends use them as well. "We're always trying to devise new ways to lead the industry," says Murphy. That includes giving customers a 10 to15 percent discount if they prepay, and also allowing online check-in at 39 U.S. locations--with more to come. Walt Disney Parks and Resorts: The Happiest Places on Earth are now healthier. Making healthy choices while you're on vacation isn't always easy, and that goes double at amusement parks, where deep-fried and sugary temptations abound--and you're rarely allowed to bring your own food. In October 2006, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts became the first U.S. amusement park chain to announce plans to eliminate added trans fats from food served at its domestic theme parks and in Disney-owned hotels and restaurants. "It was the right thing to do," says vice president Mary Niven. The policy is just part of Disney's Well-Balanced Foods Initiative, which includes making sure more nutritious options are available. Instead of French fries and soda, kids' meals now can come with fruits and veggies and a choice of water, juice, or low-fat milk; burgers contain no more than 20 percent fat (down from 22-24 percent), and by year's end, pizza will be made with lower-fat cheese and whole-grain crusts. Other parks are following Disney's lead: Universal Parks & Resorts has banned trans fats in its U.S. parks, and Anheuser-Busch Adventure Parks (which includes SeaWorld) will eliminate trans fats from its menus by year's end. Marriott International: Ultimately, warm hospitality comes down to communication. "We have a lot of jobs where people don't have that much contact with guests--such as housekeepers--but they wanted to be able to interact better," says David Rodriguez, Marriott's executive vice president of global human resources. The company turned to Sed de Saber ("thirst for knowledge" in Spanish), a LeapPad-like machine that teaches English to Spanish speakers. The lessons are a mix of stories and games, with many opportunities for students to record their attempts at pronunciation. The lessons are tailored to the hospitality industry, but they also have sections on nonwork life. And Marriott encourages employees to take the machines home, so family members can use them, too. After a four-month pilot program at 23 hotels--after which 85 percent of the participants demonstrated "significant improvement"--Marriott is rolling Sed de Saber out across the U.S., to properties across all of its brands. So far, nearly 1,000 employees have participated in the training. "We have 200 hotels in the program, and more are coming," says Rodriguez. "Now our Latin American hotels are looking to use it." A second-level course is in the works, and Marriott is also thinking about expanding the program to other languages. (Rodriguez says that more than 60 languages are spoken at Marriott hotels in the U.S.) Blanca Barrera de Martinez, a housekeeping inspector at a Residence Inn in Arlington, Va., studied English with Sed de Saber for four months. "The program was so good for me," she says. "Before, I didn't talk to guests. Now I can understand them and have conversations with them. It is so much better." Avis Budget Group: The company is making life in the fast lane possible for travelers. To spare rental car drivers from languishing in cash-only toll lanes, the Avis Budget Group has decided to enable toll-pass systems in more than 400,000 of its Avis and Budget cars, so renters can use lanes typically reserved for locals. The company, which first tested the idea back in 2003, spent the last 14 months implementing electronic toll passes in cars around the U.S.: in the east from Maine to Virginia, and in Illinois, Florida, Houston, Colorado; and in Puerto Rico. Programs in California and Ontario, Canada, will launch by early 2008. "We're adding cars each month," says Michael Caron, vice president of product and program development. "Our goal is to have transponders installed on a minimum of 75 percent of cars in each market." Some areas use transponders that attach to the windshield. Drivers can request a car with a transponder when they make a reservation; the cost is $1.50 a day, up to a max of $7.50 per week. Tolls are billed directly to drivers' credit cards. Other areas don't use transponders, but instead run images of license tags through a database of registered vehicles; Avis signed up all of its vehicles in the country. (Passes for these systems--in Houston, Florida, and Colorado--cost $2 for each day the service is used, plus tolls.) "Our aim is make your experience more convenient," says Caron. "We used to make change for customers arriving at airports, and then we sold them toll tokens, so this is a natural progression." Homewood Suites by Hilton: Choose a room like you would an airplane seat. Booking a hotel room has generally required a little blind faith. Once you've made the doubles-or-king, smoking-or-non decisions, the rest of the details (including the exact location of the room) are out of your hands. Homewood Suites by Hilton is out to change that with its new Suite Selection program, available at all of the brand's properties. When you check in online, you'll be shown a floor plan of the hotel, and you can choose from the available rooms. "It's the same concept as picking your seat when you check in for a flight," says Bill Duncan, Homewood Suites' vice president of sales and marketing. Homewood Suites is an extended-stay brand, which explains why guests would have strong feelings about the location of their suites. Each floor plan also marks amenities, so you can decide exactly how near you'll be to the elevators, laundry room, vending machines, ice machine, and pool. There's also a compass image (for those who want to avoid the morning sun in an east-facing room, for example) and a map of the surrounding area that shows the parking lot, neighboring streets, gas stations, and food options. As with some airlines' kiosks, guests are also given the option to upgrade. Launched in the spring, Suite Selection has boosted electronic check-in at Homewood Suites by 20 percent. It's currently available to Hilton HHonors Gold and Diamond members, but the company hopes to make it available to all of its loyalty-club members by the end of the year. "Suite Selection is all about empowering guests--putting them in control of an out-of-control travel world," says Duncan. "And we knew that the more control we gave customers, the happier they'd ultimately be."