Off-peak cheat sheet: When and where to travel from SA for big savings and quiet getaways
Peak season often means high prices and chaotic travel. Choosing a date more carefully can mean a significantly cheaper and more pleasant trip.
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Billionaire Jeff Bezos, best known for founding Amazon, is the founder of the private space technology company Blue Origin. Bezos himself even boarded Blue Origin's New Shepard for its maiden crewed voyage in July 2021, which came after the spacecraft flew on 15 flight tests beginning in 2012. For nearly four years since its first crewed mission, the New Shepard spacecraft has served as a powerful symbol of Blue Origin's commercial spaceflight ambitions amid a growing space tourism industry. In addition to sending space tourists on brief joy rides to the edge of space, Blue Origin has also increasingly sought to compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX. Blue Origin's massive New Glenn rocket, which flew on its inaugural flight test in January 2025 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is also being developed for future spaceflights. At 320 feet tall, the spacecraft rivals SpaceX's 400-foot Starship in size. 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Arnold Palmer Regional Airport is celebrating 100 years of airshows with an air spectacular this weekend, and there is a lot of excitement in the sky around Latrobe. The Shop 'n Save Westmoreland International Airshow is set to take place, rain or shine, this Saturday and Sunday. This show is being dubbed an international airshow because one of the big headliners this year, the Royal Canadian Air Force's Snowbirds, who flew south from Saskatchewan, Canada, to help make this weekend a success. Captain Marc-Andre Plante says that there is a very special relationship between the United States and Canadian militaries, and the Snowbirds are proud to be in the U.S., performing a show for people they consider friends. "At the speeds that we are flying at, about 300 knots or about 300 miles per hour, we will fly at 300 feet over the ground," Captain Plante said. "And given our maneuvering, we are able to do an entire show while maintaining in your field of view, which is an advantage that we have over faster aircraft." While the Snowbirds will be delighting in the sky, there is plenty for people to do on the ground, with everything from seeing souped-up muscle cars to getting photos with rolling food like the Big Idaho Potato Truck and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Still, the air is where the show is, and this show will be a special one for Major Taylor Hiester, who is not only the commander and a pilot for the F-16 Viper Demo Team, but he's from Reading, Pennsylvania, and a proud Penn State graduate. "As a Pennsylvania native, to come back to my home state, to be here and perform for the people in Pennsylvania is a dream come true," said Major Hiester. "We can't tell you how honored we are for the hospitality as we start the show here at the Westmoreland County International Air Show." For tickets and more information on this year's airshow, click here.
