With ticket prices ever rising, senior travelers look for ways to beat the high cost of flying. So, we click on Priceline, Expedia and airline ads, hoping to find the best deals. However, we should be very careful that we don’t choose the really cheapest airline. Here are ways to know when that happens:

Seated just before take-off, out your window you can see a mechanic kick an aircraft tire, then burst into tears and kneel in prayer.
The flight attendants are busy asking: coffee, tea or farewell last wishes to your family.
The pilot intercom asks, “Anyone aboard know how to fix an engine doohickie?
When the aircraft is at cruising altitude, the intercom announces: You are now free to run up and down the aisles while screaming in panic.
The only books aboard are about doomed crashes: “The Hindenburg Story”, “Tale of the Titanic” and “Hillary’s Run For President”.

If you’re interested in seeing one of the world’s most beautiful sites, visit Monument Valley. For old Western movie buffs, it is a kind of Valhalla of Hollywood immortals John Wayne and director John Ford. In 1939, Ford first brought his film crew and young actor Wayne to the Valley to make "Stagecoach".

Together they created other great movies there, including “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”, “Fort Apache”, “The Searchers” and a dozen more. Other films made in the Valley include “My Darling Clementine”, “Sergeant Rutledge” and “Cheyenne Autumn”.

They’re always worth checking, but sometimes neither online travel sites nor bricks’n’mortar travel agencies always get the best hotel prices. Most effective for finding a lower quote can often be to call the hotel phone directly during business hours.

But be sure to call the hotel’s local phone number, never the 800 info line. Then you could get an operator in Timbuktu you can’t understand. Further, that person may have no authority to book you for anything but the highest advertised retail price.

Of course, the season has much to do with day-by-day rates. For lowest prices, book Miami in July, Aspen in August, Las Vegas in October and New York in February.

We in our sunset years want to keep up with the younger generations. We seek to have all those little electronic boxes that serve as phones, tv screens, shoppers, maps and other eyeball distractions.

However, as we see in the news almost daily, there are terrible accidents caused by car drivers who take their eyes off the road to peer in the little boxes. Even when they do it for only two or three brief seconds, traffic on busy city streets and highways can become deadly.

Seniors, whether they admit it or not, slow down mentally and have diminishing sight and hearing. Also, if you get a call while driving, pull over to safety before responding. Failure to follow safety rules makes for potential disaster when they’re behind the wheel of a car.