Airplane, Airplane, take me to Alaska

Our family recently had an amazing opportunity to take a trip to Alaska, a place I’ve had on my bucket list to visit forever. At first, the plan was for just me and my husband to go and leave the kids with a grandparent or two, but that would require us to only spend 4-5 days there. If we took the kids along we could stay much longer!

The dates we had to be there were set, so there wasn’t much wiggle room on when we went. September is shoulder season for Alaska. A lot of the touristy places close around September 15, which was both good and bad; good because less crowded! Although how crowded does it even get in Alaska, population approx. 733,000, land mass 665,384 square miles. And bad because some of the touristy things I wanted to do were no longer operating.

Travel day we woke up at 3:30 am, shuffled to the car with our coffee, and drove to the airport. Our flight was early – 6 am – but we wanted to get there well ahead of time. Steve was bringing his photography equipment and wasn’t sure if it would cause a holdup going through security. Luckily, it didn’t, we got to the airport with plenty of time to spare and settled down to wait with some donuts. Sat across from a minor local celebrity in the terminal and had a texting convo with husband debating whether it was said celebrity.

We had a long day of travel planned. Tallahassee to Atlanta, Atlanta to Seattle, then Seattle to Anchorage. Our plane arrived at 4:15 pm, but with a 4-hour time difference it felt much later! I figured the kids would sleep on the first flight as it was only an hour but they were so excited they stayed up and chatted the whole time! I haven’t flown in a while but now they have these fancy touch screens with games and shows and new movies and now my daughter loves Bejeweled. I had more fun than I should playing solitaire. We had brought the kids tablets, along with coloring books and an Eye Spy book for entertainment but they were happily enthralled with the plane entertainment.

Our layover in Atlanta was short, but we were able to make our terminal with time to run to the bathroom and grab snacks for the plane before it was time to board. I was worried about this plane change, as Atlanta is super busy and you have to take a train to different concourses. Luckily everything went smoothly and we boarded our second flight with no problems. We spotted another minor celebrity sitting in first class. I love eyeing the first-class passengers as you walk back to coach and wonder who they are and what they do and what choices they made to have first-class tickets.

The planes were 3 seats, aisle, 3 seats, and I sat with the kids while Steve sat behind us. This worked out well but in the future two seats by two seats with one parent by each child would be ideal.

We had a longer layover in Seattle and I was coming to the realization how remote Alaska really is. We had just flown over 5 hours across the country, and the next flight was almost 4 more hours north. I got this feeling several times during the trip of just how remote and removed from Florida we were. Sometimes it felt foreign.

We accidently had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant in Seattle. I had a veggie quesadilla, Steve had a breakfast platter, and the kids had grilled cheese with yam French fries. It was all very good and the meat was not missed.

The most amazing place in the Seattle airport is an indoor kids play area with a family bathroom, a private nursing room for mothers, water fountain, sani-wipes, etc. This was a perfect opportunity for the kids to run around and get out their wiggles and jiggles before the next flight. Whoever came up with this area is a genius! I was dreading the thought of containing and shushing small kids in a terminal and luckily we did not have to deal with this.

The kids finally took a nap and I was able to watch Moonstruck (Cher, Nicolas Cage, good movie.) About halfway through this flight I started feeling sick with a horrible headache and nausea. I was so excited to land and see Alaska for the first time and I kind of missed it because I felt so bad.

At the Anchorage airport there is a cool tunnel on the way to the rental cars that has beautiful lights on the ceiling, and displays with Alaskan wildlife. There was a huge video on a wall of a bear in the wild the kids loved looking at. Steve was able to navigate to the rental car area and get our luggage, get us to the hotel, Comfort Inn and Suites probably a mile from the airport. We grabbed snacks from the front desk, watched a little TV, and slept SO WELL.

Side note, a lot of Alaskan hotels don’t have air conditioning – they don’t have a huge need for it, so all the windows in all the places we stayed at had windows that opened and a spare fan in the closet in case it got too hot. It’s little things like this that really give you a jolt and make you realize you’re not in Kansas anymore.