You're going to need a suitcase to hold all the links I'm going to give you today.

Last week, if you'll remember, technical difficulties prevented me from writing about using the Internet to help plan a vacation. Well, my browser is working great now, thanks very much, and I'm about to set a personal record for the number of links in one column.

Here goes.

First off I found a site that can help you make reservations for lodging, flights, rental cars and the like. Travelocity (www.travelocity.com) bills itself as "maximum power for the do-it-yourself traveler." Here you can track down information on just about any destination you might have in mind.

I checked a few of the site's 325 entries on Idaho because I'm planning a trip for some friends from New York City who have never been whitewater rafting. I managed to find that plenty of rafting guides and outfitters have seen the potential of marketing their business on the web.

Of all the rafting sites I saw, I liked the Whitewater Teaser at www.netrix.net/nwvoyage/whit_tes.html the best.

But there are literally hundreds of sites with information on rafting in Idaho. See for yourself. Point your web browser to altavista.digital.com and enter the words "rafting" and "Idaho" in the search field. You'll get several screens full of links.

I know I've often mentioned Wired Magazine's online cousin Hotwired (www.hotwired.com) here with words of praise. But not today. In it's Rough Guide section (www.hotwired.com/rough), it lists Idaho Falls as "a better stay than down-at-the-heel Pocatello."

Watch this space next week. I'm going to find the e-mail address of the person who wrote that sentence, and print it, so we can respond.

Outside of Hotwired's Rough Guide section, are some interesting travel stories. I was particularly fond of an article about a former Titan Missile launch site in Arizona that has been turned into a museum. You can read "Megaton Fun" at www.hotwired.com/planet/95/40/index4a.html.

Personally I have big travel plans this summer. Besides scaring my New York friends out of their designer clothes with some Idaho whitewater, I'm also planning a tour of Finland and Russia in July. Searching for tourism information on these two countries led me all over the Web.

While official online travel brochures seem to be in short supply about these countries, I found that lots of folks have put together elaborate travelogues that include many impressive displays of photographs and writings. Here's a few of the best ones I found:

• Around the World Journal (www.city.net/travel/atwj/). This is the story of a young married couple who quit their jobs to take a tour around the world.
• The Russian Chronicles (www.f8.com/FP/Russia/index.html). Two freelance photographers share their photographs and journal entries from a two-month trip across Russia.

If you like those, there's more where they came from. The Yahoo search engine has a list of personal travelogues at www.yahoo.com/recreation/travel/travelogues. There are also a few travelogue links at VirtEx (www.coil.com/~jhegenbe/virtex.htm), including a link to a virtual tour of Utah's Zion National Park.

To take the tour, you'll need to add a Quicktime Virtual Reality player to your browser's helper file. The site with the Zion tour has links to take you to the appropriate download site, and easy instructions for how to use it. The application will allow you to see several 360-degree photographs of the park.

Finally, if you're really interested in getting away from it all for your vacation this year, I suggest you check out the tourism information at icair.iac.org.nz. There you'll find news and tourism links all about Antarctica.

Send me a postcard if you go.

Arik Hesseldahl covers business and technology for the Idaho State Journal. Send your comments and suggestions to ahess@nicoh.com or to isjrep@aol.com. Through the Keyboard is archived on the Internet at www.nicoh.com/cyberkol/.

This column appears courtesy The Idaho State Journal and NICOH Net, Inc.