Vacation Grand Finale

*Bonus day* We slept pretty well at Buck’s cousin’s house. Everyone returned their borrowed clothes and resume wearing yesterday’s fashions. The kids were itching to see the horses, and Buck was, too. They headed out the door and to the barn; I caught up with them a few minutes later—just as cousin R handed the reins to Graysen and said, “Follow T.” He was pretty excited to be put in charge of a big, furry, winter-coated critter! The other three horses were soon in a row, heading to the front paddock to stretch their muscles and to munch some hay. What a cool way to start the day! Interesting side note: we figured out that Buck’s stepbrother is his cousin’s horse dentist! Small world :)

 

Pretty soon, everyone was ready for breakfast. We loaded up two vehicles and headed to Village Inn. The entire table soon filled with plates—seriously, we’ve eaten out SO much in the past 11 days! But, this meal, too, had to tide us over for many hours. In fact, as I write it is nearly 7 p.m. and we just had “lunch” somewhere in Missouri. We’ll call it dinner though :)

We got to the airport way too early, but that’s okay. Our first stop was the check-in/baggage area. Boarding passes were already printed and in my bag, but we wanted to double check that our luggage would for sure be on the plane with us to our new, rerouted destination. Although they’d processed this request the day before, they reprocessed a second “just in case” round of luggage routing. We’ll come back to that story later.

By our third trip through airport security, we were practically pros. We filled plastic baskets, took off shoes, dumped electronics (this laptop—I guess we didn’t have any others :), and passed the metal detector test with flying colors. No lotion residue to set off magic wands (since that and all other useful toiletries were packed away and somewhere in the continental United States without us).

After the train ride, the escalators, and the moving walkways, we were feeling pretty travel confident—and grungy. Very grungy. We sat down near an entire college softball team, and waited three hours for our plane to load (I told you we were early). I had a gnarly headache, so I went off in search of chai. Starbucks was on the EXTREME opposite end of the terminal wing. I would estimate approximately a mile of walking away. The Denver airport is humongous! I was delighted to find a little coffee shop directly in front of me that had chai tea lattes on their menu board. Hooray! I handed over my last five dollars in cash, and walked back to wait at the gate for the time (and headache) to pass.

The flight was fully sold out. Buck and the kids were all clustered up toward the front, but a bit scattered. A scattered cluster. We were praying for a solution (because you just can’t trust others and their viewing habits on personal electronics on airplanes). It turned out that the couple across the aisle from two of our kids had one member of their party in the seats between our kids and we had one kid in their row. We just switched the two spots and everyone was happy! I was cleaaaaaaaaar in the back of the plane with the softball girls—the softball girls with coughing, sneezing, congested head colds.

It was a quick flight into a small airport. We waited hopefully by the luggage carousel—50 softball bags coughed up onto the roundabout, but not a single one of ours. Ugh. So, we went into the baggage office and explained our situation. The ladies were nice and apologetic. One called and discovered all three bags had been recently scanned in  . . . to our original arrival airport (forehead slap). Because the roads were closed earlier in the day, their first pick-up of lost luggage hadn’t come. The frazzled guy on the phone said he was surrounded by more than 200 bags and he wouldn’t be able to easily grab ours to put on the next truck—assuming it showed up. So, we may or may not get our clothes, toiletries, and meds before tomorrow. I just hope they don’t finally get the note to send them to our rerouted airport. Ummmm, ugh!!!

We loaded onto a shuttle bus for the car rental place. While we were waiting, Graysen ran loops and did flying leaps to “stretch his muscles” in the vast open space inside the car rental wing. Much like the horses this morning, ha! Buck picked out a Ford Expedition with four-wheel drive. It is huge and heavy. So far, we haven’t seen any snow—at all. We’re still about 75 miles away. The kids like the Expedition; most of the roof opens to glass, so they can see the stars. Brennen says it’s like the Lincoln he did a video tour of for me at the car show. 

Meanwhile, our neighbors are holding down the fort, collecting the no longer held mail, feeding the dog, and watching for a luggage delivery. Our small group has been praying for us throughout the crazy travel changes, and we’ve felt peace despite the insanity. It is just so ironic that tomorrow is Buck’s first scheduled day back to work (other than the month or two last fall) since June of last year. We’ve had all this time to be flexible and now we’ve gotta get home : ) We will; we’re well on our way—we just need to add a couple states to the itinerary before we arrive at our front door.