Alaskan Arrival Recap

Well…if I can’t say anything else about our travels over the past few weeks, I can say this: this blog has been written all over the place. I’ve blogged in Florida, I’ve blogged in Alabama, Tennessee, Nebraska, Missouri, Seattle, and now I’m blogging in Alaska [which will be a pretty prevalent thing for the next few years…]. Today has been…interesting. To say the very, very least.

We got up this morning at 4:00 am. We had to leave for the airport at 5:15 [despite the fact that we were staying literally right across the street from the airport] because of the insane amount of luggage that we had. And the fact that the husband was carrying his pistol on the plane [locked up, unloaded, in the body of the plane for those of you who are secretly freaking out right now] and we had our two year old…so we needed the extra time. Fortunately, however, we made it to the airport with more than enough time to spare seeing as how they loaded our luggage outside and we were able to go through the “Premier” line at the airport because we were A) military and B) traveling with a child.

The flight into Anchorage went fairly smooth. Little Man fell asleep before we ever even made it down the runway. But his nap only last about 45 minutes. He did pretty good most of the flight. With the exception of his seat kicking issue [an issue I wasn’t too worried with because the guy sitting in front of Noah wasn’t actually supposed to be sitting there…he was booked to sit in the row beside us but didn’t want to be “crowded” by others, so he took the empty seat in front of a two year old. Oh well. Your loss, dude. Ahem]. The last leg of the trip was a little hairy; we started to descend and the little guys ears started giving him fits. Once we landed in Anchorage, however, he seemed to be fine.

We made it to Anchorage in time to grab a really, really, really crappy lunch at Chili’s and head to our terminal. They were concered with a weather delay, but told us that is wasn’t going to cause us any issues. Ahem. WRONG. We flew all the way [and by ‘all the way’ I mean the hour and ten minute flight…but after 7 days of traveling it seemed like an eternity] to Kodiak for them to tell us that the weather was too bad for us to land. There was about 8 inches of snow on the ground already and very little visibility. So we [aka the Pilot] turned the plane around and back to Anchorage we came. As if the whole ‘flying somewhere and returning to your initial destination’ wasn’t frustrating enough, we found out when we got back to the airport that we had to go back to baggage claim to get our luggage and back through security. Not cool.

So we get to baggage claim [and by this point my nerves were shot, I was exhausted and extremely cranky] only to find that two of our suitcases had broken straps. And I mean really broken. Totally ripped off and torn up. One of them isn’t even usable anymore. I can, of couse, file a claim through the airline, but that isn’t really the point. Add to it the fact that one of our suitcases [the one with 80% of our clothes in it] got lost in Seattle and won’t be here until who knows when.

The icing on the whole crappy cake? We went to eat tonight [in the airport…again] and left our luggage rack less than two feet from our table; and someone stole the little guys brand new, Christmas Gift, talking Buzz Lightyear that he carries almost everywhere. Not cool. Not cool at all.

So now we are sitting in the terminal here in Anchorage waiting on the plane to get here to we can hopefully get to our new home at some point tonight. I’m utterly exhausted and have been awake for way too long. On the brightside, since this has been a dominantely negative post [sorry about that], the areas of Alaska that I have seen have been absolutely breathtaking! And I made a new friend on the flight to Kodiak today. 🙂 So some good has come from this frustrating day.

Here’s hoping tomorrow is better!