My father, brother and I have talked about going to Wyoming for some time.
On many occasions, it was more of a passing "we-should-go-to-Wyoming-sometime" comment in the middle of a tale or while talking about the West. My father's mother grew up there, my father had been there a handful of times, and my brother and I had never stepped foot in the great state.
So it was one of those trips that was always supposed to happen but seemed ever-less-likely as time continued to pass, each of us got older and responsibilities continued to grow.
But I felt a great eagerness to go this year and proposed the idea to them at the beginning of 2013.
To my delight, they responded with eagerness and allowed me to plan the 1 week trip...
...which initially looked like this.
It was a full week where...
... (Day 1) we arrived in Billings, drove the Beartooth Mountain Pass to Cody...
...(Day 2) went to my grandmother's town (Powell) in the morn and returned to Cody for the rodeo...
...(Day 3) drove down to Meeteetse, Thermopolis, did a hot spring, and headed to Riverton for the night...
...(Day 4) headed toward Jackson, stopping at a Powwow and getting pie in DuBois...
...(Day 5) spent the day in Jackson, possibly cutting over into Idaho for the hell of it...
...(Day 6) driving through Yellowstone and checking out the sites back to Cody...
...(Day 7) going to Billings and spending the night there before flying back.
All looked perfect!
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On the day of departure, I woke up at 3 A.M. in Oberlin, met my dad at my mom's around 3:30 and we were off to pick up my brother at 4:20 or so for our 6:45 A.M. flight to Minneapolis.
Even with the early wakeup, all of us were excited about the trip and didn't have any travel problems or delays until we had already boarded the plane, buckled our seat belts and waited patiently to leave the gate.
But we didn't leave the gate.
The pilot announced there was a mechanical issue and that we were waiting for maintenance to arrive. When that didn't happen, we were told that we would have to get off the plane and get back on a different plane that they would bring to the gate.
We were going to miss our connecting flight.
But there was still hope!
So we were still hopeful when we landed in Minneapolis, even when we looked at the monitors to see our original connecting flight just taking off.
We thought we would be able to catch the next flight, even with a standby status, so we (somewhat) cheerfully walked down the terminal to use our vouchers....
...for a healthy breakfast...
...and play with our IPhones...
...until the next flight started boarding.
The flight attendant told us that it didn't look good for us to board that flight, although there were still passengers unaccounted for. We waited and waited as people trickled in and it even looked momentarily promising as she told us to get closer to the entryway as were about to board...
...but then the last passengers ran across the open area right to our gate...
...and our chances were gone.
It was now 11:30 A.M. Minneapolis time...
...and the next flight to Billings was 10:30 that NIGHT!
At least we had a confirmed first-class seat for that flight.
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So what do you do in the Minneapolis airport for 11 more hours?
You start playing with your IPhone even MORE...
...find a way to get into the Delta Club and meet Dan Savage...
...and then eat at a techie Japanese restaurant with IPad interactive menus.
Most importantly, you learn to wait patiently without killing each other, which we did.
On our first day of extensive travel delays, we didn't even threaten each other.
Instead, we fell asleep on the flight to Billings, got the rental car, retrieved our bags from Delta office (since they arrived hours before), and then drove around to various hotels in Billings for a room...
...but they were all booked.
So my brother called our hotel in Cody, the Irma Hotel, and they did have rooms for us that night. It was only 2 hours away.
We would be there at 2 A.M.
Absolutely giddy, we picked up coffee and snacks at a gas station and drove those 110 miles under the moonlight where, in those two hours, we saw only a handful of trucks, a drunk driver in a Cadillac and deer.
That was all. The world around us was asleep in bed.
Once we arrived at the Irma...
...the dead animals greeted us...
...and the ghosts waited behind closed doors.
We went right to our beds to sleep away this travel misfortune, still hopeful of what the remaining 6 days would bring...
...although the lost vacation day would definitely change the original plan of attack*.
* = the red cross-out lines were parts of the trip knocked out because of the travel snafu.
I'm so sorry for your travel misfortune! However, I have to say I actually laughed right out loud when reading about you playing with your cell phone to pass time and the dead animals greeting you at the Irma! Hilarious!
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