My Adventures and Places Life Takes Me: MA-VT-NH-ME Girl's Trip: Leaving SeaTac to Boston Logan (Day 1)

While on our trip to Peru in September of 2021, we all got to talking about the possibility of visiting Salem, Massachusetts for Halloween 2022. Everyone loved the plan and soon started talking about the things we might see and do. You could tell we were all excited and we just needed to reel in Mindy...which wasn't going to be hard since she loves traveling. I have never met Mindy but have heard Mom and Amy talk about her all the time. Mindy used to live in Yelm and was part of Mom's quilting guild while she lived there. They've kept in touch through Facebook since her move to Maine a few years ago. We've always talked about going to visit Mindy in Maine and it was soon going to become a reality. Mindy was also excited about showing us around Maine.

When Mom and I were visiting Amy and Josh in Pennsylvania last April, we solidified our plans on actually going since it was now about 6 months away. We had to really decide what we were going to do, when and where all we wanted to visit. We chatted through Facebook messenger when we had ideas and whatnot.

When I had some extra time on my hands, I prepared a little bit on what I wanted to see and how to get around while we were in Boston. Mom checked flights periodically throughout the late spring and early summer. The Boston area has always been on my list of places to visit, especially, Fenway Park. Between March and October, we came up with dates, hotels, secured plane tickets and documented the best we could of what we were going to do each day while we were gone. We even booked a couple tours, one of those tours was Fenway Park. I was so excited!

In late September, Mom and I bought new suitcases from Amazon because ours were falling apart, and pieces were missing off of them. They've been pretty beat up over the years. I really thought Mom's wheels were going to fall off while we were in New York City last April. She bought a teal one and I got an orange one because it was obnoxious and would be easily seen when it comes off of the carousel. The luggage was hard shelled, and my goal was to purchase stickers to put on it from all the places it travels to.

I asked if we could have a Facebook video chat about a week before we were supposed to go just to check in and go over our tentative plan. We chatted for about an hour and Rhonda didn't participate due to her schedule. It was weird talking to people in another time zone when it was daylight here and evening there. Afterwards, I checked maps, studied the subway system, put together an itinerary and looked into geocaches and Adventure Labs to get in the locations we were going to be. I knew I had to be picky and choosey with which ones I was able to get.

I got my leave situated with my boss, however, Grandpa passing away made the week before more stressful and difficult with when to schedule the funeral and get stuff done. It was awful. Poor Grandpa. He deserved better from Tracy and Kevin in the last few years of his life. Especially, the last few months, weeks and days. I sure hope he knew that he did a good job and that he was satisfied with how his life turned out. Cancer sucks but I am happy to know that he died peacefully in his sleep, and he will no longer be in any pain. I don't know for certain, but I want to believe Grammie was there to welcome him in with open arms.

The weekend before, I gathered up everything that I had minus the clothes and other stuff I would need for the week. I got all the pieces to my witch costume finally gathered, set aside my toiletries and made sure I had my notebooks, pens, headphones and other miscellaneous stuff ready to go. Throughout the week, I worked on Grandpa's memorial stuff, did laundry, made sure work stuff was caught up and the house and groceries were taken care of.

I woke up and started my workday because it was going to be busy between doing work, packing and having my one on one with my boss at the end of the day. It was a pretty average Thursday, and I was able to get my work done at a decent time before lunch. I ate lunch, did my phone calls, got in a quick shower before my meeting with my boss and then logged off at 4. Ben took a few hours of work so we could hang out and take us to the airport because Doug and Dad couldn't do it.

I got everything packed up and ready to go along with the stuff in my backpack. I did not want to forget anything. Mom called to let me know she was waiting on Dad to come home so they can head into down and drop her off at our house. We were going to leave later than I intended on leaving and Ben was getting upset that he took time off that he didn't need to take off. I told him he took time off to hang out with me before I leave for a week or so. Meanwhile, I finished up the rest of my stuff I needed to do while we waited for them. I was hoping they would stop and pick up Rhonda on the way here, so we didn't have to on the way to the airport.

Ben and I went outside and started getting the Escape ready to go and asked Ben to see what we needed to do to get the lights working again. Turns out, after some tinkering, we would need to get new light bulbs, so we decided to take Ben's Edge up to SeaTac instead. He also said he would look into it while I was gone. Mom, Dad and Rhonda showed up as we were taking Ben's junk from his vehicle to the house to make room for everyone. We piled all the luggage into the back of the Edge, said our goodbyes and headed towards I-5 north.

The traffic wasn't that bad, which as nice, but we left early just in case something weird happened on the freeway. We got off the freeway and made our way towards SeaTac, again, traffic wasn't that bad...in fact, the departures area was not busy at all, which was kinda weird during this time of the evening. We pulled up to the JetBlue drop off, grabbed the luggage, gave Ben a bunch of kisses and hugs and told him I would see him in about a week. Mom, Rhonda and I thanked Ben for driving us up.

We rolled our stuff into the ticketing area, went to a kiosk, checked in, printed out boarding passes and bag tags. I had to help Mom and Rhonda put their bag tags on their suitcases. We wheeled our luggage to the drop off, dumped them off and walked to security. Luckily, we didn't have to wait long to get through security which was nice. However, Mom and her carry-ons had to be checked further because of the stuff in her bag. It was her bag with the birthday presents inside...they must have looked weird in the scanner.

We grabbed our stuff, waited for Mom, got organized and walked to our gate to see where it was, B15. From there, we decided that we probably should have some sort of dinner and found a place to eat, De'lish, a burger place that both Ben and I have eaten at in the past. Mom and Rhonda asked if it was any good and I told them that it was a decent burger place. Mom and I split a burger and fries, I had a water, she drank a jack and Coke that Rhonda bought for her. We found the WSU/Utah game on our phones so we could watch the unusual Thursday night Pac-12 match up. We also followed the Thursday Night Football game with Tampa Bay and Baltimore. The Cougs held the Utes to a close hard-fought game, but unfortunately, we lost. The night wasn't totally ruined though, Baltimore beat Tampa Bay and Brady lost! Haha!

We finished our food, paid and went back to the gate. We still had like two hours or so to wait. I decided to wander around for some exercise and to do the Adventure Lab in the various concourses. I finished that, talked to Ben for a bit and went back to the gate. I sat there and did the other Adventure Lab while we sat waiting to board. That one didn't have a geofence so I could complete it from anywhere in the airport. Before we event left SeaTac, I found 10 really easy Adventure Lab caches.

Around 10 p.m. they started boarding. We were in group B, so we boarded the plane before Rhonda.

We found our seats, since we got to pick them with that airline, threw Mom's bag into the overhead storage compartment and got comfortable. Rhonda soon followed. I was at the window seat, Mom the center and Rhonda the aisle.

We listened to the information, took off and I scrolled through the movie selection and found one that interested me. I picked the Rise of Gru (2022) to watch for a few hours as we headed east. There were some funny parts to the movie that made me laugh. I decided that I should probably get some sleep before we got to Boston. I laid my head down on my tiny pillow somewhere over North Dakota.