Alaskan Adventure - Day 1 - Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Pittsfield, MA, Albany, NY, Cincinnati, OH, Salt Lake City, UT, Vancouver, BC
Sunny all cities, except Vancouver (rain).

Well, day one was almost a disaster. We got up late, got out of the house late and yet would have still made the 0800 plane, but I left the passports at home! What an idiotic thing to do...can't go to Canada without them. The ticket clerk in Albany made us reservations on a 1040 flight. I had to race home (literally), get the passports and race back. Of course when I got home, the garage door keypad didn't work, so I had to get the key to the door from the Perrys. So what else could go wrong? Plenty! Stay tuned. There was a flight change. Good thing I had checked my email. I had Expedia email me a new itinerary, and raced back to Albany. We checked in and the ticket agent (same one as before) had trouble processing our tickets. We had to call Expedia. Finally, with only minutes to spare, we got on a flight to Cincinnati. The agent told us that the ticket she printed was for the 0800 routing (Cleveland, LAX, Vancouver). She said "See an agent in Cincinnati, they will fix it".

We got to Cincinnati, browsed the airport shops, talked to Mark on the cell, ate lunch and went to see the Delta ticket agent. She said we couldn't use the tickets we had, because they were for the old routing and on Continental Airlines, not Delta. We were at the counter for over a half hour and it was starting to look like we would be spending two weeks in Cincinnati, not Alaska. Finally, after the agent made repeated calls to Expedia and Delta, she was able to get us proper tickets to Vancouver through Salt Lake City. At 4:45 PM, we were back in the air heading west. The rest of the flights were uneventful. We landed in Vancouver, BC at 8:45 PM PST.

After clearing customs, we checked into the Fairmont Hotel at the airport and had dinner. Beautiful hotel, not what you would expect at an airport. The meal was excellent too. Bath and shower to wash the road grime off, then sleep. Hopefully, the fun starts tomorrow.

It was a long and harrowing day. Not many photos. Check 'em out at http://community.webshots.com/album/550947535xlPLjd Who wants to see photos of Cincinnati, anyway?