This journey began the night before as all my journeys do, with the last minute laundry and packing and ensuring the household will survive my absence. In bed by 4:00am, up at 7:00 to get my children off to school and finish any school work due that day (a Stats test, as it happens, *sigh*). The traveling portion started with a 3 hour shuttle ride from Duluth to the Minneapolis airport with a few of my fellow travelers.
The journey through the airport from check in to gate for a neophyte traveler like myself was cause for some minor stress and confusion as to what went in what bin and what exactly needed to get pulled out and why, for goodness sake, do we have to take off our shoes? Next time I am wearing slip ons. At the airport we slowly gathered the rest of our travelers and made our way to the gate. Not a fan of flying, I fretted at the delay to de-ice the wings. Was this something to worry about? All I can say is that we must have had a great pilot and good flying conditions because it was the smoothest flight I had ever been on.
Arriving five hours later in Anchorage at sunset was absolutely lovely, and I even looked out of the plane windows to view a marvelous spectacle of sunset and mountains! Next up, after shuttle to airplane, was for us drivers to get the rental vehicles. A bit of a wait, some loading and unloading and we were on our way in Anchorage. General consensus put food over sleep, and we lucked out to find a really great place to eat at the Bear's Tooth Grill. By the time we'd eaten, we were all getting a bit iffy in the sanity, loopy department and we were pretty happy to arrive at our sleeping accommodations! Thirteen hours of traveling after three hours of sleep, and I had entered the twilight zone of exhaustion where I could either crash or go for another few hours. Sleep and sanity won out, I am happy to say.
There was not much looking around that night, but it was pretty awe inspiring to look out the window in the morning! I wish this picture could convey the sheer immediacy of the mountains here in Anchorage.
The journey through the airport from check in to gate for a neophyte traveler like myself was cause for some minor stress and confusion as to what went in what bin and what exactly needed to get pulled out and why, for goodness sake, do we have to take off our shoes? Next time I am wearing slip ons. At the airport we slowly gathered the rest of our travelers and made our way to the gate. Not a fan of flying, I fretted at the delay to de-ice the wings. Was this something to worry about? All I can say is that we must have had a great pilot and good flying conditions because it was the smoothest flight I had ever been on.
Arriving five hours later in Anchorage at sunset was absolutely lovely, and I even looked out of the plane windows to view a marvelous spectacle of sunset and mountains! Next up, after shuttle to airplane, was for us drivers to get the rental vehicles. A bit of a wait, some loading and unloading and we were on our way in Anchorage. General consensus put food over sleep, and we lucked out to find a really great place to eat at the Bear's Tooth Grill. By the time we'd eaten, we were all getting a bit iffy in the sanity, loopy department and we were pretty happy to arrive at our sleeping accommodations! Thirteen hours of traveling after three hours of sleep, and I had entered the twilight zone of exhaustion where I could either crash or go for another few hours. Sleep and sanity won out, I am happy to say.
There was not much looking around that night, but it was pretty awe inspiring to look out the window in the morning! I wish this picture could convey the sheer immediacy of the mountains here in Anchorage.