The LONGEST Trip Ever!

On November 21st I set out for California....if only it were that simple.  I got my plane ticket, Carleton took me to the airport in plenty of time to make my flight, get ready, this is a long story...as I'm sitting waiting, I hear over the intercom "If you're going anywhere but Ft. Lauderdale, San Francisco, or Sacramento you'll be fine".  So I went to ask the man what that meant, I told him I was headed to Sacramento, after a long conversation of him being really confused he said I'd miss my layover.  Well after waiting for 50 minutes I'm finally next in line.  Then the guy gets back on and says; nevermind, everyone will make their flights.  Well I decide to wait and ask the woman anyway, she disagreed with him but after they argued for a minute she said you might make it, all the stewards guaranteed me I'd make it there.  They made me check my (carry on size) bag which was full of glass and my gps, all essentials for the wedding and nothing else, so i unpacked almost everything and put it in a plastic bag...well you guessed it, I got to the Philadelphia airport, they didn't say which gate we landed at, didn't read off any connecting flight info, no monitors or airport workers with flight information when I deplaned so I decided to just run to the gate I had initially received on the ticket in RDU.  Well when I finally got to the gate they said, that plane just left (technically it was still there but the gate had been closed) and besides it was at a different terminal.  I started crying when they told me I wasn't going anywhere until the next morning.  I mean Melody's wedding was at 9 am!  I sob my way to customer service where they say they can get me to Phoenix, get a "distressed passenger" voucher for me for a hotel, so I asked how much that would be...$70-$80. I was like this is not right, it's not my fault, your people in RDU should've told me I wouldn't make it when they knew our arrival time and the other planes departure time was within 5 minutes and in completely different terminals.  Eventually I get to AZ with my hotel room booked.  As I told the stewards in Raleigh I knew they'd misplace my bag...they did.  In Philadelphia, I asked them to make sure it got up with me in Arizona or Sacramento so I didn't have to wear brown clogs with my purple dress.  I arrived to AZ at 12:05 am (2:05 my time).  I go to lost baggage, they find it after an hour of looking, I go to the phones to call for my hotel shuttle, they informed me they had just ended their shuttle for the night.  I ended up renting another hotel which ended up being ghetto and the people were rude.  I sat outside the airport for 35 minutes, I finally got to my hotel after 2 (remember, 4 my time).  I had to be up by 4 to catch my shuttle at 5 and my flight didn't leave til a few hours later.  We got to Sacramento later than anticipated then we had to circle for 50 minutes because of fog.  As I'm sure you  gathered from all this, I missed Mel's wedding, but I did make the luncheon reception.  She glowed, I was so glad I got to see her on her special day and to meet her man!

That night I got to meet up with Beth.  I hadn't seen her since March when we were both visiting Idaho.  It was so great to see her and run around her home town with her.  We went to the most amazing frozen yogurt place called top it off....I think.  It had 3 choices of styrofoam cups, 6 different fat free frozen yogurt flavors, and I think I read somewhere they had something crazy like 92 toppings, pretty much every topping you can and cannot imagine.  I got chocolate and vanilla yogurt with fresh raspberries, raspberry sauce, cookie dough, and brownie bits.  The great thing is you can do as little or as much ice cream/toppings and as few or as many toppings as you want and it's all done by weight, so you can top it off however you like!  That night we went to see Twilight which was pretty much what I expected, not as good as the books, at times corny, but so much fun with Beth.  In the pictures we're trying to be wolves/vampires/bella...and the crazy one is us just being us.

I woke up, got in my rental car, and drove back to the airport at 5 am and got back home after three days in the airport at 10 that night.