Planes, planes and automobiles

Tuesday 5th August

Johnny's brother Tim warned us that all our plans wouldn't happen as we expected, so we were thinking of him when we arrived at the airport in Orlando at 7.30 a.m. to hear that our flight to Seattle had been delayed by 12 hours.


In the end it wasn't too bad. We kept our cool and were thankful that the boys are older than some of the toddlers in the queue, that they both had a D.S. to play on and that we had each other and a credit card! After queuing for two hours we got to the front of the queue and were offered 2 options.


a. Catch the plane to Seattle at 7.45 p.m. that evening, stay over night in a hotel in Seattle, and catch a flight to Missoula the next morning.


b. Catch a flight to Los Angeles at 1.20 p.m. that afternoon, L.A. to Seattle at 5.30 p.m. and Seattle to Missoula at 8.40 p.m.


We went for plan b. thinking at least we would arrive in Missoula that night, even if it would be 10.59 p.m. and hey, Rachel and the boys had never been to Los Angeles anyway.



The boys were most excited at receiving the vouchers of $8 each for lunch at the airport from the airline and enjoyed trying to get the most they could for the money (pizza each, 2 garlic bread to share, a drink and a piece of cake each - not bad for an airport!)

Although the trip was long, we left the villa in Orlando at 6.30 in the morning and arrived at Kyla's house at 2.30 ish (Orlando time), a journey of about 20 hours, it all went well. The boys were extremely well behaved and coped with all the hanging around and three flights really well.

Sam was most excited on the trip to Seattle to Missoula about the aeroplane having a propeller and being able to watch it go round! [Johnny notes that if you can actually see it going around you are going to reach the ground fairly soon]

It's interesting the view of a country you get from the air as we travelled from one end of America to another. To start with it's big! Secondly, there's so much of the country with nothing in it, and so much is so dry! I wasn't impressed with the view of L.A. It looked very 'grey', whereas Seattle looked lovely. Very green with mountains on one side and the coast on the other. It helped that there was a great sunset as well.

Missoula was a great airport to arrive at late at night in that it's just the right size. You can sort out the car hire and wait for your baggage at the same time! We were most impressed that our luggage made it to join us in Missoula as one of our connections was only 40 minutes.

We found the way to Kyla's house perfectly and it was lovely to get such a warm reception despite it being about 12.30 a.m. local time. We flopped into bed thankful that we'd gone for plan b.

Rachel