Day 1

Thursday morning arrived bright and too early and we headed out to the airport.  We caught our flight to PHL with no problems.  This was good because I was looking forward to some Chick-fil-A.  We hung around for a few hours waiting for our flight to LAS.  I knew beforehand that this flight was overbooked and that we probably would not get on, and so I had prepared a back-up plan.  Well, we did not get on, so I hustled over to Special Services and had them update our flights.  I had to hustle because the next flight left in 20 minutes from the C Terminal (we were currently in the middle of the B Terminal).

 

So we made it over to the gate and there were concerns that we wouldn't make it on to the plane because of weight restrictions. (Weight restrictions are often present when flying in the summer because more fuel is required.  Because planes have to carry more fuel, they have to sacrifice seats).  However, God worked it out and we were able to get on our plane.  Our next stop would be DFW.  But before we left the gate, it became apparent that my bag would not fit in the overhead compartment.  So I had to gate-check it and pick it up in LAS.

 

We made it to DFW, but we were late, which caused us to miss our connection to LAS.  Once I had assurances that we would get on the next flight, we relaxed and had some lunch/dinner.  I called my ex-roommate living in big D to let him know I was in the area (and that I may need some help if we got stranded there).  They had an iPod vending machine at the airport, which was pretty neat.  You could buy all sorts of iPods and accessories with just a swipe of your credit card.

We boarded the flight on-time and landed in LAS at around 6:00pm PST. But I would not start a paragraph with a sentence like that unless there was more to the story.  And there was.  My bag that I gate-checked in PHL did not make it to LAS.  This is why I normally never check bags when I fly.  But this time, it was a smaller jet and I really didn't have much of a choice.  So I got in line and filed a claim.  There were two more flights from DFW coming in that evening, so they expected it to arrive later that evening.  We thought about hanging around and waiting for the next flight, but it's a good thing we didn't.  I would not see my bag again until we arrived back in Harrisburg.

We took the shuttle over to the rental car facility and picked up our wheels, a white Jeep Liberty and took off north towards St. George.  Three hours and a Walmart stop later, we arrived at our condo rental and crashed at about 11:00pm PMT.

And that was the first day.