Planes, Trains, and Automobiles?

Well actually it was planes, shuttle bus and automobiles …

A week ago Friday, Kristen left her wonderful college campus BYUI at 9:30 am and boarded a wonderful shuttle bus that looked somewhat like this…


She took a four hour trip to the Salt Lake Airport, in what was suppose to be a fairly comfortable ride, but early on in the trip it was noted that the air conditioning was broken. So she enjoyed a four hour trip in 90 degree weather with no air conditioning. No problem, you may say, just open up the window, but… the only window that could open was the drivers window.


Good news though she arrived at the airport in plenty of time to catch her flight out to Denver and then to Chicago. But… the flight she was scheduled to take to Denver was delayed in arriving to SLC so - no problem says Southwest, how about we fly you to Vegas and then you can take a connecting flight to Chicago. So off Kristen goes to Vegas Baby!


She arrives in plenty of time to make her connecting flight to Chicago. But… in Chicago we are having terrible thunderstorms and needless to say, they delay their departure, waiting for the storms in Chicago to pass. After a two hour delay - they take off to Chicago. Yippee!


So, instead of arriving at 10:40 pm she arrives at 12:20 am. No problem we say, we are just all so glad to have her home we (Lee, Katie and I) jump into our car and drive off to Midway. But … to our surprise, (it really shouldn't have been a surprise, with the storms we had that night) the place is totally slammed. It takes us 20 minutes to drive from the entrance of the airport to the Southwest terminal. Finally, I go into the airport help Kristen with her bags and Lee circles the airport.



It's amazing that she can be all smiles and look so wonderful after only 15 hours of modern day travel! As any mom, I am thrilled to see her and we enjoy small talk about her day as we wait for her luggage…


Along with a million other travelers in the wee hours of the morning.



So we wait …



And wait for - a hour and a half - tick, tick, tick - meanwhile mind you, Lee is still making that 20 minute circuit around the airport loop another three times.


And just when we think that perhaps her luggage is lost and are headed to the lost luggage counter what do we see, but her luggage on another carousel going around and around. Who knows how long it had been going around that carousel!



Finally, we all loaded up in the Honda and drove home arriving at 2:30 am. Not bad, I guess if you compare yourself to the pioneers who traveled for weeks to make the same journey.

And a day and a half later, I loaded her and her sister Katie up in the Honda and off we went to Girls Camp for four days in Lafayette, Indiana. Let the good times roll!

Pictures and fun details to follow.