Madhouse in tiny Sitka airport. It is Sunday, August 7, day 12 of our epic Alaska adventure. Our plane was scheduled to leave Sitka at 7:00 am. We were on the early shuttle ride from the hotel (five minute ride) and arrived about 5:30 or so. It was still rainy with lots of low clouds, but already getting light since sunrise was 5:10. That is definitely an advantage of being this far north in the summer.
We had been told repeatedly by multiple people that we did not need to arrive very early since the Sitka airport is a tiny, sleepy kind of place. Not this morning! Even at 5:30 am it was a chaotic mess with people going every direction. Everyone seemed to have lots of baggage and many were pushing dollies piled high with boxes labelled "frozen fish". We assumed Saturday was the end for many fishing trips, meaning Sunday was the day to fly out.
We fought our way to one of the kiosks to print baggage tags. An Alaska Airlines roving agent quickly helped us fasten the tags to our bags and whisked them away. Then we moved to the even more chaotic line to go through security. Thank goodness for PreCheck. With only one TSA agent it was not clear that everyone in the normal line was going to get through in time to make the flight. We finally made it to the passenger departure lounge which was worse--standing room only, already packed and getting worse by the minute as more people kept coming in. I found a place to sit on the floor and considered myself lucky.
SIT to SEA to DFW All is well that ends well. We made it on the plane. Sitting in first class, we got the breakfast that we missed since we left before anything was available in either the hotel or the airport. It was actually quite good and very filling, given that it was billed as a continental breakfast.
The plane arrived 20 minutes late, but that was not a problem since we were scheduled for a 2.5 hour layover and our connecting flight ended up leaving 40 minutes late. As with the trip up, the Alaska Lounge made this quite pleasant. However,we were very thankful that we were using the app Trip-it to monitor all of the flights. It kept us up to date on the changes in times and gates better than the overhead boards in the Seattle airport. At least one of those boards would have sent us off to another terminal!
There had been solid clouds from Sitka almost all the way to Seattle. However Seattle was beautiful, with not a cloud in the sky. Unlike coming up the week before, we now got a good look at Mt. Ranier on the flight leaving Seattle.
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| Mt. Ranier from our airplane |
We arrived in DFW almost an hour later than scheduled, but it was still light. Being a Sunday evening there was no traffic, so it was a breeze making it home.
Whales are moving on and so must I. I saw today an article online from the Maui News that this year's first humpback whale was spotted off South Maui of the Hawaiian Islands on September 14. This whale almost certainly is one of what will be an estimated 11,000 humpback whales that will make the 3000 mile migration from Alaska to Hawaii. Although the peak season for whales in Hawaii is January to March (thinking of you, Ann and Sharon!), they are already starting to arrive.
If the whales are ending this year's season in Alaska, then I guess I should wrap things up too. As I have explained to some in person, this blog of our Alaska adventure is primarily for me. I have relived our adventures while putting together this online "scrapbook",and I will be able to revisit it in the future. It is also a way for me to share with family members who are spread across the country.
If you have been following along and made it through all of these many posts, thanks for following. If you have stumbled into this by accident, the starting point with a directory to the various parts of the trip is here.
What do we do for an encore? It is hard to imagine that any trip could measure up to this epic adventure. However, having had such a good time, we put down a deposit for another cruise with UnCruise Adventures. The discount they were offering if we made the deposit before we disembarked was just too good to turn down.
We have not decided on which of UnCruise's many destinations we will choose, We are very interested in the Galapagos Islands, but another trip to Alaska, perhaps with a different itinerary, would be great. Even the Panama Canal/Costa Rica cruise sounds interesting. Stay tuned!
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