Yes, that's what it felt like trying to get our family to Florida! December 26th started out as any travel day does... bags packed, house clean, laundry done, Bella to the kennel and on the road on time (usually). Anyway, our flight to Florida started at Flint airport and when we left the house, the flight was on time (does this give you a hint...?)
Arriving at the airport, we were told that our Delta flight was CANCELLED. Not delayed. Just cancelled. Apparently Atlanta airport (our connection) had LOST it's radar! Yeah! I first thought, *$#&!?*, then I thought, gee, glad we were not already in the air when Atlanta's tower Lost it!, so anyway, after about 1 1/2 hours negotiating with Delta's ticket counter, we were booked on a flight out of Grand Rapids airport at 6am Saturday morning. Fine we thought. We will drive to GR, get a hotel and get to bed early and get on the plane Saturday morning. No biggie, we can handle a small delay in our travel plans. (or so we thought)
So, we do as planned, get to the airport at 5am, Rick drops us off in the rain at the door, with no porter to help with the bags, we get all the bags in the terminal, Rick drives off to park the car and guess what... yup, THE FLIGHT WAS CANCELLED!
FOG DELAY. This time it took us 2 1/2 hours at the Delta ticket counter and when we walked away, the flight they booked us on was out of Chicago on MONDAY morning. Well, earlier when I said *$#*%?!, that does not describe how we felt when we drove away from GR airport. The Fog and warm rain on Saturday was not going to let any flights in to or out of any mid west airports. None. None of out Detroit, Cincinnati, Chicago; for days.
So, we drove away from the airport, went to a restaurant to eat some breakfast and figure out our plan. We decided to drive. Yes, the car was packed, the kids were fed, and we were absolutely determined to get to Florida to have our vacation! So we headed the car south, programmed the navigation system for Ft. Lauderdale and started our journey. (I know most of you reading this are thinking... are they insane?) You are all entitled to your own opinions...
So, after we drove for a while we called friends and family to tell them what was going on with us. A wonderful friend told us to head for Nashville and get a flight from there to Ft. Lauderdale. We called another friend to look for flights out of Nashville for us and soon we again had a smile on our face as we received a refund from Delta to cover the cost of the flight from Nashville to Ft. Lauderdale; so we booked the tickets for Sunday morning, 6am.
We drove all day, stopping every few hours for snacks, potty, etc. and made it to downtown Nashville for dinner about 7pm. The kids were absolutely awesome in the car all the way there. Rick drove straight thru and Julie kept everyone happy in their seats. Our friend insisted we stay at her place in downtown Nashville and so we took her up on the offer. We found a great restaurant to eat at in downtown... Old Spaghetti Factory; where we all ate the best spaghetti ever. We parked our truck at our friend's place and got the kids washed up and in bed by 10pm... we needed to be up again at 3am, so only a few hours of sleep for all of us.
We succeeded in waking the kids up and getting loaded up in the taxi to the airport on time. We checked in at the airport and were confirmed on the flight... Good, we are thinking... almost there. Our flight took off on time at 6am (7am our time... they are an hour behind us in Nashville) and we were on the ground in sunny warm Ft. Lauderdale by 9:30am Sunday morning, a day and a half later than planned.
Jim (Uncle Jim) picked us up and fed us breakfast and got us to our timeshare resort on the beach and we were settled and in the room, later than originally planned, but we made it!
So getting our family home from Flint airport this coming Saturday and getting our truck back from Nashville are minor technicalities... it will all work out in the end... we always have a plan.
The title of our blog is pretty appropriate for this post. Family adventures...
We will post pics of our trip after we get home. The internet connection here at the timeshare is not great.
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