The Journey Home, Reno-Tahoe, LAX and SeaTac

I got up before the alarm went off at 7 a.m. needing to pee something fierce.  I told Ben he needed to get up and get ready or we wouldn't have enough time to get breakfast.  I checked my phone and I had a bunch of text messages and Facebook notifications but oddly no phone calls.  I was sure mom would call me bright and early as she was getting ready for work but she didn't.  I did call Grammie and told her it was a joke because grandpa saw the post that morning and liked it.  She said she didn't think we actually did it but she added; you just never know.  It's true.

We took a little longer than I wanted so breakfast would have to wait.  We got all of our stuff packed up, we had to leave our popcorn, nubs, Chex mix and water behind because I wasn't sure if they would let me bring open food through security.  I knew you couldn't bring opened beverage containers through. We took one last sweep of the room, headed downstairs to check out and wait for our free airport shuttle.  Around 8, we followed Larry to the shuttle and it took us roughly 15 minutes to be dropped off at our airline departures.  We thanked him, gave him a small tip and made our way to our E-ticket machine.  We got our boarding passes, went through security and my laptop had slowed us down again and had to be checked further but we didn't have to wait as long thankfully. 

We used the restroom and walked to our gate to see where it was before we went to look for food.  We found a place near our gate, sat down and decided what we wanted to tie us over for the rest of the day.  Our waitress took our order of eggs, pancakes, bacon, toast, hash browns, orange juice and coffee.  We split it because I didn't think I could eat an entire meal to myself.  We didn't have to wait long. Our food was delivered to us really quick and we were both impressed.  Our food definitely hit the spot.  We paid, used the restroom again and walked to our gate.

We were scheduled to board around 9:30ish for our flight to leave to Los Angeles around 10:06.  I still couldn't believe we had to waste the entire day traveling to a place we don't even get to enjoy.  Yes, the airports in Nevada have slot machines inside them.  If you didn't get enough while you were in Nevada you can do your last minute gambling while you wait for your flight out of there.

We finally boarded and I made sure when I booked the flights home to have us sitting somewhat close to one another.  This flight Ben got to sit across the aisle from me.  I sat next to a quiet Asian kid and Ben sat next to Daphne, who was going to Maui with her daughter from San Francisco.  We chatted with her most of the way to Los Angeles, which was about an hour or so flight from Reno.  She basically told us her life story and we shared some of ours with her.  She really reminded me of Celeste's mom, Kathy.

When we got to Los Angeles, we had to walk through a walkway to get on a shuttle to the terminal to where our next gate was.  We stood in line for about 20 minutes until we got on a bus.  When we got to our gate, it turns out they changed our gate number and we had no idea.  Thankfully we had a short layover so we could get to our gate in time especially for stupid stuff like this.  We had to walk, what seemed like forever, through a series of mazes and corridors go get to the corrected gate.  Because we had that extra layover time we used the restroom, bought some water and a few postcards.  We found a place to sit down, plugged in our phones and called a few people.  We saw Daphne one more time an told her to have fun with her daughter in Maui.  I finally got to talk to mom and she told me this hilarious story.  She didn't have enough time to check Facebook that morning so she got to work and Kim came up to her and said, Valerie got married?  Mom was like, "I don't think so, where did you hear that?  Kim replied, "on Facebook."  Mom was a bit weirded out but did not believe we actually got married.  Fun story though.  We boarded shortly after.

The plane ride from Los Angeles to Seattle was about 3 hours. He also sat across the aisle from me on this flight too.  Ben watched a movie to pass time and I got onto my laptop for a while.  We took three plane rides this past weekend and every time we boarded a plane the model upgraded.  We took a prop plane down, took a 2-seater to Los Angeles and from California to Seattle it was a 3-seater plane with screens, free games and movies.

When we arrived in Seattle the weather was hotter than Southern California by about 10 degrees.  Ben let Josh know we arrived and he came and picked us up.  He is a part-time Uber driver so he appreciated the money.

We got home just before 7 and I let everyone know we were home.  I did some laundry, showered, ate some dinner and relaxed for a bit before bed time.  I was definitely going to be tired the next day but it was only a four day work week!

Next Adventure:  The Week of Smoke