If your spring and summer plans include long road trips, Google Maps and AARP have put their tech tetes together to help make your journeys more economical and enjoyable.

According to USA Today, they’ve eliminated the need for lugging along with you stacks of road maps, info books, discount brochures and other bothersome paperwork. With the new Google/AARP map tool, every bit of thousands of items about travel info is available immediately with just a click on your iPhone or similar electronic device.

You’re now able to plan ahead for the most favorable routes, rest stops, restaurants, shopping, hotels and thousands of other bits of useful travel information. Even better, it allows you to check prices, take advantage of discounts and maintain a sensible budget throughout your road trips.

In order to take advantage of the new service, you must be a signed-up member of AARP. For more information, go to discounts.aarp.org

Seniors who travel frequently are certainly aware of airlines continuing to raise the number of points needed to earn free or upgraded flights. Now, along with the nickel-and-dime price add-ons coming almost daily for air travel, hotel chains are getting into similar belt-tightening.

As recently reported by USA Today, Hilton, Marriott and Starwood have required earning free nights through their loyalty programs to cost more points. Depending on the hotel’s location and quality, the point requirements were raised from ten to 25 percent. Along with the room prices, unfortunately.

What can the senior frequent traveler do to combat these increases in the cost of transportation and hotel accommodations? The best advice is to shop around before booking. Always look for special sales that may be posted for just 24 hours. If you’re not already aware of it, make your hotel stays when prices are lowest, such as mid-week and off-season. Of course, always book mid-week and night (red eye) flights whenever possible.  

If you have a personal online or hometown travel agent, be sure you’re regularly informed of all pricing possibilities as they break.

According to CNN, the Paragon Space Development Corporation may hire a husband and wife to be on the first manned (and womanned) journey to the Red Planet. Still in the early planning stages, the space flight would happen in 2018.

The planners may look for a senior couple as volunteers, because Paragon scientists fear radiation and other space hazards would have negative effects on young travelers’ internal organs. That means the travelers would have to be beyond childbearing age.

With new technology, the 70-million-mile roundtrip would take just under two years each way. So far in the plans, there would be no landing on Mars, just a brief orbit of the Red Planet, the total requiring the couple to be away from Earth for almost 48 months.

Old traveler’s response: Four years is a hell of a long time to be away from the grandkids, senior discount at IHOP and the TV soap operas.

All right; admit it! Many of our senior readers then in uniform sought wartime romance and/or overnight companionship when off duty. Later, when working careers required travelling alone, they continued their wandering ways. Although it wasn’t flaunted as it is today by Hollywood and reality TV, way back then no-tell-motel trysts were just as popular.

The rented romps in those days were considered naughty, even illegal, and many hotels had house detectives to keep everything kosher. However, determined couples always managed to get together for nature’s most natural activity.

A USA Today story recently cited one Manhattan hotel that actually encourages such goings-on. It’s the Flatiron Hotel (www.flatironhotel.com), which charges from $145 to rent a room for up to four hours during the day.

The manager now even boasts that the quick... er... er... turnover permits the hotel to make more money than when renting rooms for the traditional 24 hours at similar prices. Figure the math: $145 x 4 is much more profitable than $145 x 1. 

For more information about how ... er ....er... widespread this practice is, go to dayuse-hotels.com