Things are starting to look more positive for our being able to go on this trip. Stephanie’s mom is doing well, thank goodness, and we are starting to feel better about leaving. Things could still happen to derail this trip at the last minute, but for now, we are set to go.
We started a little packing last night, well more like we set some things out, mostly cooler weather gear such as gloves, hats and socks we had purchased for our recent Antarctic.. It will not be nearly as cold in Alaska, but still cool enough at night to need these items.
We are trying to pack only for about 7 days since after that, we will have access to washers and dryers for the second week of the trip.
The current 14 day forecast is calling for quite a bit of cloudy and rainy weather, so we are trying to make sure we have sufficient socks and shoes in case they get wet, and we need to have time for them to dry. We will be taking at least three pairs of shoes, some that are specifically made for more rainy weather. Having enough socks available to allow any damp socks to have time to dry is part of our plan, and we purchased several pairs of lighter weight wool socks for Antarctica, which we will be taking with us on this trip since they keep your feet warm even if they get damp.
Hopefully, we will get more items set out to pack in the next couple of days so we are not packing at the last minute.
This trip will be the first tie we will be parking at the Columbia Airport for the duration of the trip. Our departing flight is early on Saturday morning at 6:58 AM, and our return flight is scheduled to land at 11:42 PM. We normally try and get a rides to and from the airport to avoid the parking fee, but we don’t have drivers available to us any longer, both of our mom’s are not driving any more. We thought about using Uber, but then we would probably need to schedule specific pick up times because of the early and late flight times, and that adds to their fees. The parking is not terrible at the airport, and it just makes everything simpler for the small difference in parking versus using Uber. We are then entirely in control and won’t have any anxious times waiting on rides. There is an online pre-booking parking rate that saves 24% for both surface and garage parking so we will definitely be taking advantage of that savings, especially since we can pre book the night before and still get the discount.
We still have not moved forward with reserving two seats on the airplane tour around Denali, with a glacier landing. After looking at the long range weather, we just think it will be too cloudy to see much of anything, and we are a little worried about the potential for turbulence in the mountain air, which is always worse than flying over flat land due to updrafts. Stephanie is not a fan of turbulence in airline flights, and I wonder if she will enjoy having about 1.5 hours of potential turbulence in the small airplanes used for the tour.
We will continue to monitor the weather for that portion of the trip and also discuss the flights with Ashley and Bryan since they did the same tour the last time they were in Alaska.
Well, its off to start pulling out some clothes and set them on tour upstairs bed, which is our official packing zone. We can close the door and keep Sophie, our cat, from laying on all of our clothes and chewing on any strings on various items we lay out to pack.