The alarm went off at 5:00 AM, as scheduled, and it was time to get up for our long travel day home, around 14 hours total if all goes well. We got up and started getting ready. I took the last rapid test for COVID we had, the second one of the two we had brought from home. It did not take it long for it to show I was still positive, about 4 minutes. Apparently there was nothing wrong with these COVID tests, we had questioned the one I had taken the first time, it was a different methodology than we had used before, but it obviously worked. I guess the first time I was not sick enough for it to show up as positive on a rapid test.
We got our clothes from yesterday packed into the suitcases, as well as our toiletries, and were set to go. The bags weighed 49 and 47 pounds, so we were good on weight. We split our last bagel and cream cheese and left the room at about 5:50 AM, a little late but close enough. Ashley and Bryan were already at the car and had most of their luggage packed, as well as the fish box. It was apparently too large to put into a suitcase as Ashley had planned, so they were going to have to check it separately.
The front desk was not open yet, so we just had to drop off our key cards there to check out. With everything packed into the Tahoe for the last time, we headed to the airport, which was just a few miles away. We dropped off the car at the Enterprise Return, which was in the same location as the pickup, so we knew our way from there into the terminal.
We headed to the Alaska Airlines check in desk and only had to wait in line for a few minutes to check in. We had to pay for our luggage again, even though I had called the other day to make sure it would not happen on this leg of the trip. We were told that since Alaska Air was the first segment of the trip, they were the primary carrier and the AAdvantage Card credit for free baggage did not apply. The rep checking us in even called to confirm, and in the end we had to pay $30 per bag again. I will not be happy when I have a talk with American Airlines again after we get home to get this all straightened out. We bought these tickets through American, and there were American Airlines Flight numbers for all of our flights, and they are “World Partners” with Alaska Air, whatever that means. Apparently, it does not mean we were getting free checked bags today.
At least we received boarding passes for all three of our flight segments, we had to get them from Alaska Air on the flight out for the last leg into Anchorage, we never figured out why American Airlines could not print us boarding passes for the Alaska Air flight segment on the way out.
It took Ashley and Bryan a while to get all of their bags checked. We found out afterward that Ashley had checked them in online last night, but the rep was having trouble finding that information in the system. I do not know if she also paid for them or not last night, maybe that was the hang up, finding the pre-payment record in the system. The “heavy” 53 pound suitcase did not get accepted, they had to move some items to another bag, we had though it was too heavy last night, and we were correct.
After getting checked in, we all headed to security, and it was busy, but not too bad. We did not have to take out any electronics, we only had to remove our shoes and any metal objects, and empty our pockets. Stephanie and I went through one line and Ashley and Bryan went through another. We were through our side quickly, but Ashley’s bag got stopped again, apparently for the same reason it got stopped on the flight going out here, there was something vacuum bagged in it that looked suspicious, and it was still in the same bag for the trip home. I guess moving it to another checked bag to avoid the hassle again was not thought of.
After getting through security we headed to the gate, we arrived with plenty of time to relax before the flight to Seattle. Ashley and Bryan got breakfast from McDonalds. We were not that hungry, but later decided it would be a good idea to get some sausage and egg biscuits to eat later during the flight. These are long flights with no food service, and there is not a lot of layover time for purchasing food in between flights.
We boarded without incident for our flight to Seattle, and had plenty of space for overhead bin storage. Stephanie and I watched movies on our phones through the free online Alaska Air entertainment system. I was able to finish watching the Puss N Boots Movie from the flight out, and the system even knew where I had left off the first time, sneaky “cookies”. Then I watched a Tom Hanks movie called News Of The World, which I had never heard about. It was pretty good, and had a good ending, even though there were a lot of evil acting characters throughout the movie.
We eventually ate our sausage and egg biscuits, and they were really good. At one point in the flight, after they had made an announcement about our progress, we got up to use the bathroom and got scolded by the flight attendants. We did not know that several people behind us had also gotten up, and all of the restrooms, except for first class, were in the rear of the plane behind us, all three of them! I think people thought we were getting close to starting our descent because of the earlier announcement, but we still were over an hour away. Anyway, there was now a line at the rear of the plane, and that was not allowed due to security concerns, so we had to return to our seats and wait until people were finished and the line was shorter. Part of the issue was that all three of the flight attendants were also hanging out in the rear of the plane, so there was no space back there for passengers to use to have easier access into and out of the restrooms.
We waited at our seats, sort of standing in our seats looking toward the rear of the plane. We were having to displace the person on the aisle seat of our row so we could still get out when the line was less long. In the meantime, at least four other passengers nearer to the rear of the plane got up to get in the bathroom line as people finishes their restroom visits, and we had to wait even longer. I know they saw us go back to our seats and could see us standing up waiting, but they went ahead of us anyway.
Finally, after waiting several minutes for everyone who needed to use the restroom in the back of the plane to finish, we were able to head back and take our turn. It was the worst layout for bathrooms I have ever seen on a plane, especially when all of the flight attendants are also back there.
We landed in Seattle without incident, and the weather there was nice and sunny, just like it was on the way out to Alaska two weeks ago. Our time in the airport here was sunnier that we had seen on our entire three day visit to Seattle quite a few years ago.
We headed to our next gate and found that our flight was slightly delayed, our plane was coming in from Charlotte, the same place we were heading back to, and it was running a little late. We were at the end of the terminal, and there were three gates here, none of them really large enough to accommodate all of the people waiting for the flights leaving from these gates.
We did find some seats in another gate area and sat there. Ashley and Bryan purchased some sandwiches, but we were still full from our biscuits we ate on the first flight. I noticed we did not have any boarding group assignment on our boarding passes we had received from Alaska Air, so I headed to the counter to check on that. The attendant said that meant we were in Group 7 by default, but I told her were were assigned to Group 5 on the flights out because of our AAdvantage status. She printed us new boarding passes, and that moved us up to Group 6, wow!. There were nine Boarding Groups altogether, so I guess it was still better, especially since the flight looked really full, based on how many people we saw at the gate area.
Ashley also went to the desk and got new boarding passes for them after I explained the situation. Stephanie and I decided to go ahead and purchase one sandwich “wrap” to take on the plane for later since it was a long flight without any food service. I went to the store and got us a chicken Caesar wrap, the same as we purchased on the way out. They had the turkey wrap we also got the first time, but I did not remember it having had bacon on it, so I opted for the chicken. Stephanie told me the turkey wrap she had purchased on the way out did have the bacon on it, but both had been good, so we were good with food on this flight.
We boarded about 20 minutes late, but they were still expecting us to arrive at or close to on time in Charlotte.
Stephanie and I watched movies again during this flight. We had selected aisle and middle sets on this flight, mostly because Ashely and Bryan were also on the aisle and middle on the row across from us, which was slightly offset forward from our row. These were the first aisle and middle seats we had selected in a long time, we normally like the window and middle seats. It was not much different for Stephanie, she is always in the middle anyway!. The girl in the window seat on our row was really nice, and she said she probably would not need to get out, and we told her it was not an issue. we were usually the ones making people get up. True to her word, she never needed to get out from her seat for the entire flight.
Ashley and Bryan had the row to themselves, as did several other rows nearby, some only had one person in them. I guess it was because of our proximity to the one restroom located in the middle of the plane, but there was never a line of people waiting, at least not on our side forward of the restroom. On the other side was the exit row, so there was more space there for anyone to use while waiting on the restroom to become available.
Stephanie and I both watched movies and shows. I am not sure what she watched, but I watched a si-fi movie called Vesper, another movie I had not ever heard of. It was OK, but just something to watch.
We ate our wrap about half way through the flight, and it hit the spot. I ended up just listening to music from the downloaded Spotify playlists on my phone while looking at slideshows of photos from our past travels that were also on my phone. As we approached Charlotte, there were some thunderstorms in the area, so they put on the fasten seat belt signs and prepared the cabin for landing a little earlier than normal so the flight attendants could also get seated. We could see some lightning in the distance through the window.
It was sort of interesting that it was now getting darker outside than we had seen at any time in Alaska for the past two weeks. Even though the sunset was around midnight and the sunrise was around 4:00 AM in Alaska, it was never completely dark, sort of a twilight. Now, it was getting dark, especially with the storms in the area and it was only about 9:15 PM in Charlotte.
We were slightly late arriving at the gate in Charlotte, some due to the initial delay, and some due to having to deal with weather at the airport from the thunderstorms. Some people near us were worried about their connections, but we were only just over five minutes late from our original flight arrival time, I think they were just not thinking about it clearly. One lady said she only had 30 minutes, but that was plenty of time in Charlotte, it is not that big of an airport. Plus, more than likely, the rain had impacted all of the flights anyway.
We had over 50 minutes to get to our gate, but we were going from about as far away in Charlotte as you can get. All the regional planes fly out from Gate E in Charlotte, and we arrived at Gate B. We confirmed the gate assignment for our next flight and headed that way. Ashley was in complete rush mode. She took off at a fast pace, and the three of us followed, but less quickly. At one point, she got on a walking sidewalk that was really ending past the E terminal we needed, and Bryan followed her. I was about to go the same way, but Stephanie stopped me and said we needed to take the other moving sidewalk paralleling the one they got on but ours ended at Terminal E, the one we needed. I was glad she was paying attention. It was too late to stop them, Ashley was at least 50 feet ahead of us, we did not know what her rush was.
They eventually caught up to us at our gate, we had slowed to a reasonable pace and they were still hustling to get there. When we arrived at the gate, we saw our flight was delayed about 10 minutes. Apparently, Ashley thought our flight was already boarding when we had gotten into the terminal from our other flight, and that was the reason she was rushing, but that was not the case. It would not have even been boarding yet if our arriving flight was not delayed, it was still over 35 minutes before the original departure time when we got to the gate.
The flight to Columbia got delayed again, apparently our plane was coming in from South Bend, Indiana, and was arriving late. At least we saw our crew of pilots and flight attendants arrive at the gate, so we now had half of what we needed, we just had to wait on the plane.
It finally arrived and we started boarding about 30 minutes later than scheduled. The flight was not full, so it did not take long to board and there was plenty of overhead space, helped by the fact that larger carry on bags were being valet checked at the gateway for storage under the plane.
It took us a little bit of time to pull away from the gate, it sounded like they were still loading luggage. After we backed out, we headed to the taxi way and had to wait behind a few planes before it was our turn to take off. There were planes also landing on our runway, so there was a bit of delay before we finally took off. It was a little bumpy initially heading out of Charlotte, so the pilots said there was not going to be any in-flight service so that the flight attendants could also remain seated.
Once we cleared the clouds near Charlotte, it was a clear and smooth flight. The flight was only about 25 minutes in the air, and we landed in Columbia without incident. Then we had to wait on a plane to move from our gate, which seemed odd that there would be a flight leaving that late. There we no lights on inside the plane being moved, so maybe it was just being moved to another location, but it was being done under its own engine power and not being towed, so maybe it was a delayed departing flight, that was leaving after midnight.
We got off our plane via a ramp walkway and Stephanie and I headed to baggage claim. Ashley and Bryan had to wait on their valet checked carry on bags by the terminal building. When we got to baggage claim, it was packed. There was another flight that had apparently landed just before us, and it was a much larger flight from Dallas. Their luggage had not even started to come out yet. They were using the same baggage claim carousel because it was the one assigned to American Airlines flights, and both flights were on American.
Baggage started coming out, and we were surprised that our bags came out pretty quickly, first Stephanie’s bag, then three bags and a fish box for Ashley and Bryan, and finally my bag. We all headed out to the surface parking lot, but somehow we ended up in a different spot that we thought, we were on the opposite side of the ramp up to the lot, and we had no choice but to go this way. I think we were on a walkway through the garage that was a little farther down than the one we had used on arrival, but it was the only crossing near the baggage claim we could see.
We said our goodbye’s and we walked out our car, and made sure it started before Ashley and Bryan drove away. Everything was fine with the car and we got the bags loaded and headed to the exit. It was nice to finally be able to take off our masks after have worn them continuously since we left the hotel this morning, over 16 hours of travel time with the delays. We passed Ashely and Bryan, they had moved their car over to get their bags instead of walking with all of them to their car.
We got out our pre-paid parking voucher and parking lot stamped entry ticket and headed to the exit to pay. We thought we might be charged a little more, she mumbled something about the time, but did not charge us even though we were about 40 minutes past the exit time I had put on the voucher, which was midnight.
The drive home was uneventful, but we were being wary of other drivers since it was almost 1:00 AM on a Saturday night, raising the possibility of being on the road with bar patrons at this late hour.
We arrived home and Sophie was glad to see us. We were going to skip any unpacking, it was just too late. We needed showers, and thought about heating up some Nutrisystem burgers for dinner, along with a relaxing beverage. However, things were a bit out of sorts at the house, and we had to take care of some issues instead of relaxing.
We noticed our large street light on the dock was on out by the boat, and realized I had turned it on accidentally when we were messing with the dock lights the night before we left. It had not come on then, but I was using it to see if we had power on the dock, and I had flipped the switch back and forth a few times, but it had never come on. It was on now, and probably had been on 24/7 for two weeks, ouch on the electric bill. It is a sideways switch, so it is hard to tell which side is on or off. I guess we need to mark it.
Also our Homeseer home automation system was not functioning through Alexa, and it took some time to reset everything, only to find out the issue was because of an update to Windows Edge, which had restarted the small PC that runs that system, and it had hung up on some selection screens for Edge, and never restarted the Homeseer system. I now need to figure out how to disable auto updates for the future.
When I had gone out to the dock to turn off the light, I noticed Stephanie’s hibiscus on the patio was severely wilted, certainly due of a lack of watering. It was listed on the watering instructions we left for our house/cat sitter, but obviously had not been watered enough. Then I checked the plants on the front porch, and they were not much better off so I had to water all of the plants, fun things to do at 1:30 AM in the morning. We do not now if one of the plants on the front porch will survive, it was all brown, and one of Stephanie’s favorites, it had come from her mom’s house.
Then I had to fix the toilet in the half bath, the chain had come off of the flush valve, which only happens when the flush handle is pushed too hard.
Then Stephanie found that we had clean sheets on the bed, except there was no fitted sheet put on, so she had to strip down the entire bed and add the fitted sheet. The worst part was that Sophie’s water bowl in the bedroom was mostly empty and it had obviously not been cleaned out for a long time. Apparently, our cat sitter, who does not know how, or really want to water our plants, is not that great of a cat sitter either, who does not wash out a water bowl and let it get all brown in the bottom.
The worst was that we had left a bag of trash in the garage the morning we left, and it was still there, along with one bag left from our sitter, and one bag of stinky garbage still in the kitchen trash can. We thought we had the trash situation fixed from a previous trip where garbage was left here, our sitter has to take her home trash to the dump anyway, but I guess that was too much to expect to take both the trash she generated during her stay here, plus the one bag we had no choice but to leave the morning we left. We did not check the used cat litter bucket, but I am guessing it is either full of bags of dirty litter, or all of the dirty litter bags are in the one trash bag in the garage that was left with the one we had left.
We then found our towels in the dryer, but they had obviously not dried all the way, they were severely wrinkled, like they had sat clumped up while damp, and eventually dried over time, but not by the dryer itself. We had no choice but to use them tonight for our showers. Now it appears we need to hire a maid for the house/cat sitter, and hire someone to take care of watering our plants, which would seem to be an easy task, but apparently not for anyone under the age of 30, I don’t think they even now how to turn on a water hose.
We were so aggravated and it was now almost 3:00 AM, so we just headed to bed. Hopefully, we will get a good nights sleep.