Alaska - Day 6 - July 3, 2011

Rick, Jeff, Tina and Dave

Awoke to another gorgeous sunny day.  Cheri had wanted to get up early and go out with Dave one last time.  She had all her gear ready to go before bed, but neglected to change the alarm...so it went off at 7.  That left  hour before breakfast.  So we ran out and saw a few bears.

The plan was to fly out at 10.  For some reason the people coming in in the flight were late so our plane arrived late.  What a bonus!  We got an extra hour with Dave, Tina and the bears!!

We were sad to leave paradise, but feeling satisfied that we had many superb bear encounters.

We arrived in Anchorage, rented a car, gave Jeff a ride to his hotel, found an extra bag to get all our gear home, had a bite of lunch, and struck off for points south.  Well we didn't get too far on Highway 1 when the traffic backed up for miles.  We never did work out thwart the issues was; whether it was simply holiday travel o the 3rd of July or something more serious.  So we turned around and headed north.  As we got near Eagle River the skies darkened and the rain came.  So, being resourceful, we spotted a movie theater and went to see Larry Crowne.  We both very much enjoyed that!

After the movie we went south again, this time the roads were clear.  We drove for about an hour until we needed to return to drop off the rental car.a fun day.

Then the flight saga began!  We were scheduled to take off at 11:45PM via Phoenix.  A silly route to be sure.  I had tried to get us rebooked through Philly, but they were full.  So we stuck with the original plan, had dinner at Humpty's and sat in the boarding lounge.  The crew finally shows around 10:55 and we heard the first signs of trouble...there was a pesky battery that wasn't charging.  Long sorry short...we were finally rebooked on an alternate Phoenix flight leaving at 2:45AM and we'd lost our first class seats.  At least we scored emergency row!  Of course with all the fooling around they boarded late and we were preparing to miss the flight in Phoenix. 

So we landed with 15 minutes to get to our next gate.  We thought our luck was turning as the next gate was quite close, we got there and learned they had out us on the next flight, but we we able to get on this one.  Great!  Home by 6!

The plane took off and about 45 minutes into the flight the stewardess let us know that we were heading back to Phoenix!  A sensor in the air conditioning  unit was acting up and it was a pressure sensor.  So we headed back to Phoenix after burning off some excess gas.  They finally fixed the sensor and we took off about 15 minutes before the other plane was scheduled to go!  So we are now scheduled in at 8 PM.

At least the flight crew on this new flight is very good!  The one on the anchorage Phoenix flight was miserable indeed.

Enjoy!
Cheri & John