Just so you're not all too jealous of our wonderful, amazing, once in a lifetime trip to Alaska...I will now tell you about our travel home nightmare (along with some amazing scenery shots)...
So...we had been debating for days whether or not to trust the Alaska State Ferry again for our ride home. On the one hand, it is the much cheaper option. On the other hand, we all remember what happened on Day 1 of the Alaska trip when the ferry changed it's departure time leaving us stranded. Our other option was to take a bush plane back to Juneau...very reliable, but much more expensive. Of course we are cheapskates so we went with the less expensive option:
The Glorious Ferry
But boy did we have some amazing scenery on the way out:
But boy did we have some amazing scenery on the way out:
This was the first time while we were in Skagway where the clouds were low, hiding the peaks and glaciers. Luckily also the only rainy day.
Leaving Skagway on the ferry...and the last view of the port and the cruise ships.
Good times on the ferry...watching dvd's on the laptopSo what, may you ask was wrong about taking the ferry this time? Well, our arrival time in Juneau was SUPPOSED to be 90 minutes before our flight was scheduled to leave for Seattle (tight schedule). If the ferry was on time, we could have made it...but of course the ferry was late! We arrived at the airport only 30 minutes before our flight's departure...just 15 minutes to late to check our bags!!! So we had to change our plans fast. Luckily, Alaska Airlines has no problem re-scheduling all our flights and we were set to leave Juneau around 7 pm and arrive in Seattle around 9:30. This gave us about 6 hours to kill waiting in the Juneau airport. Brent ran to the local Fred Meyer to pick up a couple more dvd's for the boys to watch and we had a great (boring) 6 hours waiting for our flight.
We got on our later flight with no problems...but the big problem lay ahead: there were NO flights from Seattle to Portland that night after our arrival. So we had to wait until 5 am to board our flight to Portland. There was no way we (cheapskates) wanted to pay for another night in a motel or risk missing this flight (all the later ones were booked)...so we had the most FABULOUS accommodations EVER!..sleeping in the Seattle airport! JOY! I am sure our family will remember this forever. Especially I. Who oh so comfortably slept on airport chairs being in the state of 7 months pregnant (with Toby often sprawled out across my lap).
But I guess those are the risks you take when you travel. And those are risks I'm willing to take because the results of the trip are SO worth it! The really kicker in the ending of this story is that we could've driven back to Portland in only 3 hours getting home sometime in the middle of the night. But then we would've had to rent a car and not get our money's worth on our airline tickets...no way we were doing that.
But the good news is that we made it home safe and sound, and all the guys seemed to sleep pretty well at the airport (the little boys were such troopers, I think more travel is in their future)...and best of all, we had an absolutely AMAZING trip!
(I think we slept for 2 days straight after we got home).
THANK YOU once again Liz for being an incredible hostess!
We got on our later flight with no problems...but the big problem lay ahead: there were NO flights from Seattle to Portland that night after our arrival. So we had to wait until 5 am to board our flight to Portland. There was no way we (cheapskates) wanted to pay for another night in a motel or risk missing this flight (all the later ones were booked)...so we had the most FABULOUS accommodations EVER!..sleeping in the Seattle airport! JOY! I am sure our family will remember this forever. Especially I. Who oh so comfortably slept on airport chairs being in the state of 7 months pregnant (with Toby often sprawled out across my lap).
But I guess those are the risks you take when you travel. And those are risks I'm willing to take because the results of the trip are SO worth it! The really kicker in the ending of this story is that we could've driven back to Portland in only 3 hours getting home sometime in the middle of the night. But then we would've had to rent a car and not get our money's worth on our airline tickets...no way we were doing that.But the good news is that we made it home safe and sound, and all the guys seemed to sleep pretty well at the airport (the little boys were such troopers, I think more travel is in their future)...and best of all, we had an absolutely AMAZING trip!
(I think we slept for 2 days straight after we got home).
THANK YOU once again Liz for being an incredible hostess!
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