Aaaand....We're Back!

I would like to say we had a pretty uneventful return trip to Alaska—but that’s not the case. We’re happy that these delays happened on our way back. Our first flight from Pittsburgh to Chicago was delayed for about an hour, which made for a very narrow window to make our connecting flight to Anchorage. However, when we landed in Chicago our connecting flight had been delayed about the same amount of time. So, we even ended up with enough time to grab some dinner before we settled onto the 6+ hour flight to Anchorage.

We landed in Anchorage around 11:10 pm local time—that’s 3AM PA time! Needless to say, we were exhausted and were supposed to catch our next flight at 6am to Bethel. Simon went to wait for our luggage while I went to customer service to change our morning flight to be a little later. I successfully changed our once 6am departure to a beautiful 11:10am departure. That change meant we could eat breakfast at the hotel and spend some time catching up on our lost sleep. In the meantime, Simon was waiting and waiting and waiting for all of our luggage. We had been concerned that it might not make all of our connections with the delays.

We were right! Simon’s gun case didn’t make the flight from Chicago to Anchorage—there is really no explanation for it because all of our other bags made it, oversized cooler included. We spent some time in the Baggage office to determine what might’ve happened to this case and where it can be sent to when they find it. The customer service agent was having a hard time understanding that we still had 2 more flights and hadn’t checked our luggage to our final destination. Even people in Alaska don’t always understand how tricky traveling can be. We left the office with the suggestion of filing a claim with Alaska Air in Bethel instead of with United in Anchorage. I’m still baffled by that decision, but it was late at night and we just needed sleep.

The next morning we woke up and headed back to the airport to check in for our flight to Bethel. We met Ben there and spent some time catching up while waiting for our flight. While we were waiting in the terminal I spotted another blogger from the bush, Shelly from The Cunningham Family in Bush Alaska!

We’ve been reading Shelly’s blog since at least April of last year. Their blog provided us with quite a bit of practical living suggestions for bush Alaska. You might find it surprising that even after Simon’s coaxing to go introduce myself, I still didn’t go talk to her. Shelly ended up on the same plane as us, so when we landed in Bethel Simon tried to talk me into it again. Unfortunately, we were on a serious time crunch to check in for our next flight.

We landed in Bethel with about 10 minutes to spare. So, while Simon and Ben gathered the luggage I ran over to Yute to check us all in. During that time Simon completed his lost bag claim AND introduced himself to Shelly! So, I tell you that to say that we’re famous in the blog world because Shelly also blogged about meeting Simon. You can read about our encounter as well as check out her excellent blog here.