Alaska Bound

We dropped our two dogs off at the kennel on Sunday (June 26th) and started our trip. We had dinner at Cracker Barrel (in New Hampshire) and then headed to Boston and our hotel. We got stuck in a big traffic jam in Medford, Massachusetts. They are doing construction on I-93 over the summer. Eventually we made it to our off-airport parking center where they were nice enough to drive us to our hotel (the Hilton that is connected to Logan) instead of making us take their shuttle to Terminal A and then a hotel shuttle - the hotel is connected to the airport by two very long covered walkways which we took when we went to Iceland last March and didn’t like. We checked into our room and watched TV.

The next morning (Monday, June 27th) we took the hotel shuttle back to Terminal A and went to check-in with Alaska Airlines. I should mention that I have never flown Alaska Airlines before. I should also mention that I found Alaska Airlines (like other places in Alaska we went to) have their own sense of time. When a flight is supposed to leave at 8 am to a non-Alaskan it means that it will leave sometime between 7 am and 9 am to an Alaskan and you just need to be ready at a moment’s notice. We had First-Class tickets and so stood in the line for First-Class only to find there was no one working there. We had to wait and go into a regular check-in. When it was time to go through security we again looked for either a First-Class or a handicapped lane, but did not find one. I have had issues in the past with the TSA at Logan, but this time they were pretty good. We found our gate and waited for our flight.

They pre-boarded us (which didn’t make much difference since we were in First-Class) and wanted to put the wheelchair under the plane – even though there are closets inside every plane for one chair right in front. We had a few words with the flight attendants and they finally agreed to let the chair on-board. The head flight attendant even had the nerve to say that while we were boarded first we would be taken off last to which both my mother and I replied that that was not going to do especially since we had a connection to make.

The flight itself was pretty bumpy. The food (which was free in First-Class) was not very good or tasty. Their entertainment systems (again free for us) were handheld things that made it hard to watch – they should have been on the back of the seats like most airlines. They had a few current movies, but most were from the 1980s and a few from the 1960s. One good thing is that you could change movies whenever you wanted instead of waiting for all the movies to play before they restarted them. We were able to pay to use Internet on-board though – which was the first time I have ever used the Internet on a plane in the air. The rest of the flight was uneventful.

We landed in Seattle where we made sure to be one of the first off the plane (seating in Aisle 2 helped) with our chair and right away I noticed the disgusting smell, the overcrowding and the filthiness everywhere. We landed in Terminal N (which looks and feels like a shack) and had to take a train that gave the station information in Japanese first and sometimes in English to Terminal C. We had some time to kill before our next flight and we wanted to go to Alaska Airlines’ Boardroom, but found out it was too far away and so then we went to the main food court where there were no tables and lines of 5 people deep. We went to Wendy’s where they messed our order up. We took the food back to the gate to sit and found the food too disgusting to eat. I do not like the Seattle Airport and will not go back there if I can help it. It feels more like being in a Third World Airport than in an American one.

Again we pre-boarded for our flight to Anchorage (with the same random time changes.) The plane was exactly the same as the one we took from Boston with the same movies, bad food, etc. The only difference this time is that we had to put the chair under the plane instead of inside the cabin – I guess someone’s coat was more important because that’s all that was in the closet.

We landed in Anchorage where I first thought the airport was pretty nice (that would change.) Alaska Airlines has a policy that your bags will be delivered to you within 20 minutes – which they kept the whole time – and so I got our bags and went to the hotel phones to call the Comfort Inn only to find it was not listed and so you couldn’t call them since you needed a special hotel number to call them. I went outside to tell my mom right when a Comfort Inn van pulled up. The guy was looking for a group of 3, but took us instead (we never did get that group of 3.) There were 2 other people in the van that were from Connecticut. For the first part of the trip we only met people from New England and then the last part we met only people from the South.

We got to the Comfort Inn (which was close to the train station) only to find it very creepy and smelling of sewage. People were fishing in a very small creek right across the street. We checked-in and made arrangements for our shuttle the next morning to the train station. Since there was no restaurant on-site and we didn’t want to take a taxi to one we called a pizza place and they delivered to us.

That was our trip from New Hampshire to Anchorage. It took us 3 hours to drive to Boston by car, 6 hours to fly to Seattle where we had a 3 hour layover then a 3 ½ hour flight to Anchorage where we were 4 hours behind Eastern Time. It took some getting used to having 21 hours of sunlight too.