From Belgrade to Houston

January 17, 2009

Today is our last travel day. We leave the tiny Bozeman airport with it's 5 gates and fly to Denver. I've always heard to avoid the Denver airport because of all the weather issues slowing down flights, but I have to say that this is a very well put together airport. There is free wifi which is always good. Plus there is a lot to eat and do. The signage here is wonderful. It's not such a bad place to have a layover. We're here for 6 hours, but so far we've stayed pretty busy. After all our flight delays traveling to Tulsa back in December, I was well prepared for delays for this trip. We traveled through 3 different airports that receive freezing temperatures and snow, but haven't had a single delay. All our shuttles and flights have been as scheduled.

When we were checking into Southwest at the Denver airport I was reminded of checking in with Delta at the Hayden airport a week ago. Delta, or at least Delta at Hayden had the most inefficient way of checking in baggage that I've ever seen. We arrived with a short line and they told us to put our luggage down in the line, leave one person standing with it, and the other walk over to the kiosks to check in. Since we were checking bags, they needed to see our ID. Well, Mark was over standing with the luggage. So, the Delta attendant found Mark and checked his ID. Then, I had to go to the ticket counter to actually get the luggage tags and they had to come get the luggage. It was insanely inefficient. Luckily at the time we were in no rush, but just shook our heads and laughed. Later, after walking around a bit, we saw the the line to check in to Delta was a mile long and there were piles of luggage stacked up in the zigzag part of the line blocking everything. What a mess.

Tomorrow we'll be getting back to normal life. It's been a very long vacation for us and we are thankful to be able to use it to travel. Though Monday will be hard, I think we're probably both ready to get back to work and sleep in our own beds for sure. Thanks for reading our blog and stay tuned for pictures.

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