Wildknights91

What’s the longest trip you’ve ever taken?

It was a bucket list goal. One that was out of reach for a long time for many different reasons. However, a few years ago I did it!

But the journey to Alaska was long. While I have my limitations, my mother does better with a traveling companion. Therefore, my adventure and travel started a week before heading to the far northwest.

I packed two suitcases. The small carryon size with wheels. A laptop bag and a large backpack. It took a few hours and a stop in Chicago to travel to the small airport nearest my mother’s house (a 40-minute drive away).

Somewhere in the process of loading and unloading into/out of one of the two aircraft, one of my suitcases was damaged and a wheel fell off.  It took a few minutes of ‘why won’t this bag move correctly’ to figure it out.

The first stop was a trip to Wal-Mart to purchase a replacement. I selected a sturdy and slightly larger suitcase. The plan was to only use the larger suitcase for the ‘big’ trip.

After a few days of reorganizing and repacking of my mother’s and mine things, we were on our way to Seattle, via a stopover in Chicago.

In all my travels, which had been mostly up and down the east coast, I had never seen such a mess of an airport as Seattle’s. It was clearly a case of the business having outgrown the terminal one or two decades before. I had been to small airports where you would board and disembark directly on the tarmac before. But Seattle had what must have been fifty to sixty airplanes on the tarmac with passengers everywhere.

Buses ferrying this way and that. The chaos was real.

Once we arrived to the terminal, which was under construction, we walked around in circles to find the baggage claim and then more walking and confusing to find the door out.

It had been a long flight with too much walking for me and my mother. By the time we finally found the hotel bus pick up area it was apparent that the brand-new suitcase had a broken wheel.

Some cosmic being was laughing their sides to splitting. Right?

If they weren’t yet, they were going to die of laughter when we could not figure out how to call the hotel bus.

The problem is both my mother and me, with our low vision and the darkness of night, we could not see any instructions. I saw the name of the hotel on a board telling us where to wait. But nothing else.

It had taken us so long to find our bags and where the bus was supposed to be that there was no one around. It was just us two women with a bunch of bags suitcases (including the one with a bad wheel) and nothing else.

I was in tears.

/

After another hour, we finally found someone to help and on the way to the airport. Really, that airport is the worst.

Of course, we were back at the same airport the next morning for our flight to Anchorage. The terminal was packed. Standing room only. Once we finally boarded the plane for our four-hour flight things started to look better.

I really wish we had been able to spend a few days in each city we traveled along the way. Maybe seeing some of the cities would have made up for the rest of it.

Of course, the suitcase was still broken and we had to travel home with it in that state. But we did have a nice Alaskan tour and cruise.