Before I begin, consider that we have had it the easiest of all. We made it into Grand Junction yesterday afternoon, but my brother is now on his third day stuck at DIA, and my parents are still in VA with tickets to fly here on Christmas day! We were truly blessed (as we all have been in one way or another) to have been able to change airlines, fly into Salt Lake City, and then drive to Grand Junction - but I speak for all of us involved when I say What a hassle! And like I said earlier, I probably don't have as much room to talk as the rest of my family because we have had it the easiest.
Our flight to Salt Lake City yesterday was 5 hours beginning at 11:20pm, so it was straight through the night. Unfortunately Koa was the only one who got much sleep! He was absolutely wonderful leading up to the flight even though it was way past his bed time. And initially he even slept like a dead man in his car seat on the plane. But about 30 minutes into the flight he could no longer take sleeping without his bed and started fussing. Eventually (after trying all sorts of combinations of things!), we set a blanket on the floor and he slept just fine under our seat for the rest of the way. All told he probably slept, off and on, for about 3/4 of the flight. Kathy and I however spent all night holding our feet up!
As you can imagine, Salt Lake City Airport was insane because of all the stranded DIA travelers (I guess this is true of every airport right now). When we had our tickets transfered from United to Delta in Honolulu, they only transfered our tickets coming out here, so we had to go track down the United ticketing booths in SLC and try to get them to transfer our returning flight. It was a complete mad house with a 4-5 hour wait in line! But then it occurred to us that maybe we didn't want to change our return flights, that maybe we'd stay the course and fly from Grand Junction to DIA and then on to Honolulu on January 1st. So we left the melee behind!
Unfortunately, the airplane gods weren't going to let us go that easily. Because so many people were stranded at SLC, every car at every rental car company at the airport was rented. We luckily already had reservations so our car was waiting for us, but the kicker is that we have to return it to SLC! They said it's a $3000 fee to leave the car in Grand Junction! So how do we drive from SLC to Grand Junction (5 hour drive), then drive back to SLC to drop the car off at the end of our trip, then get back to Grand Junction to get to DIA to get to HNL!?!
What we ended up doing was saying phooey to waiting for 4-5 hours at SLC, got our rental car, and hit the road for the way here. When we arrived at Grand Junction we just drove straight to Walker Airfield and stood in their line at the United booth (with a whole 2 people!) and got the whole thing straightened out in about 10 minutes. I absolutely LOVE small airports! For anyone out there still struggling to get flight arrangements - get online or in the phone book, find a small little airport out in the middle of nowhere but still has major carrier booths, and make your changes there instead of listening to the busy signal on the phone for 3 days straight or waiting at a major airport for hours.
So now we are set to fly back out of SLC on January 1st via Delta and should get to HNL around 4:00pm HST. Yes, this means we'll have to leave Grand Junction at the crack of dawn to make it to SLC for our 10:30am flight, but as I said at the beginning of this post, we still have it better than most.
Shifting gears a little, our drive from Salt Lake City to Grand Junction wasn't too bad. Kathy and I needed a pick-me-up and Koa needed to run around for a bit before getting strapped back in the car, so we ate an early and long lunch at Wendy's in Salt Lake City. Koa got to crawl around on the carpeted floor for a while which was quite fun to watch since we was wearing more clothes at the time than he was ever worn the rest of his life combined! The rest of the drive to Grand Junction was rather uneventful and we made excellent time (closer to 4 hours than 5!). Koa napped off and on most of the way and we pulled over at gas stations along the way to stretch our legs and breath in the cool, crisp air (Kathy gripes about the cold, but it let's me know I'm alive!).
Upon our arrival to Grand Junction, we went straight the the airport and then downtown to our hotel where we unpacked, showered, stretched, and then met up with my Grandparents - Hunt and Myrna Zumwalt - for dinner at their house and to introduce them to their first ever great-grandson (a.k.a. Littlest Zumwalt). As you can imagine, Kathy and I were worn out for not sleeping for days, so we called it a night around 9:30 and came back to our room to crash.
Koa is still under the weather so he coughs and sneezes during the night which wakes him up for a couple of fussy minutes. Since we're all sleeping in the same room here at the hotel (we brought Koa's famous Pack 'n Play for him to sleep in), that also means he wakes us up during the night! So, between mid-night coughs and just adjusting to Mountain Standard Time, we had a rather busy night. Today we plan on sleeping in!