The alarm went off at 3, and it was full speed ahead. We got up and ready, and I attempted to check out online, using the link that was given to me with my keys at check in the day before. Obviously, it said that the service wasn’t available until 4:45 am. Because isn’t 4 am when this service is most needed?
We booked it out of the room about 3:45. I sent Nick to the car with his stuff and I headed to the front desk, where, thankfully, there wasn’t really a line, and I was checked out and on my way quickly. I found Nick waiting for me on the garage side of the elevators. He’d moved the car much closer to the elevator than where we had had to park the day before, so we loaded my luggage up and we were on our way.
Google sent me a rather convoluted way to the airport, but we made it, and added our car to a LONG line of returned cars. Big check out day! So it unfortunately came as no surprise that the line for the bus to the terminal was LONG. Surprisingly they had a system. The primary holding pen for lack of a better description was full, so we were directed to a secondary one. Over the course of more minutes than I would have liked, two buses cleared the crowd from the primary pen. The third bus in was directed straight to ours. Thankfully, once we were on a bus, we were moving quickly (after waiting a solid 15-20 minutes for one), and ours was the first stop when the bus arrived at the terminal. Allow yourself time folks!
Check in with Southwest was easy enough, and I got a look of appreciation from the baggage taker for taking the 10 seconds to locate the transfer tags and put them on our suitcases before approaching luggage drop off. It’s the bowl of pink tags, people!
TSA Pre had virtually no line, so we were through security in no time. Nick got himself a breakfast sandwich from Wendy’s, which was apparently on special. $1 for a breakfast sandwich was hands down the cheapest food item purchased all week. We got some bottled water for the flights, because unlike Boston, Vegas knows how to open food vendors when people are traveling, and made our way to the gate, where Nick ate and we stared off into space (and at the gambling machines) until our flight boarded.
Ok…story time! Southwest has been doing full overhauls of their flight schedules approximately two months before flight time. When I booked our flight, we were booked on a 9 am departure out of Vegas, with a fairly quick (hour?) layover in Chicago, and into Boston about 6:30 pm. For a flight coming from the West, it was about an idea a flight time as we could hope for. Well, when Southwest changed the flights, they put us on a 5 am departure from Vegas (blech), with a lengthy layover in Baltimore, and into Boston about 6:30 at night. When they make these changes, you have 3 days where you can switch to another available flight at no extra cost, keeping the same airports. The best available option to Boston that I saw involved this same 6:20 departure that we now found ourselves on, with a layover in Chicago, and into Boston at 6:30. Just for S&Gs, I checked out flights to Manchester and they were WILDLY cheaper than they had been when I originally booked. So…I completely canceled our booking, and booked us on a 6:20 out of Vegas, with a 3.5 hour layover in Chicago, that got us into Manchester at 6:30 at night. Oh, and since I canceled the flights and lost EBCI (this all took place at 4:30 am…I’m not perfect…), and flights were so cheap, I booked us business select, and STILL had a 20,000 point refund. I figured with traveling all day, boarding early and having our pick of seats might not be such a bad thing.
So…we were like A5 and A6 to board this flight. When we boarded Nick marched us straight to the emergency exit section, specifically the row that has no seat in front of the window seat. So he got extra extra leg room for this flight.
The flight was completely full, and uneventful. We took advantage of the free drink coupons that had come with our fare (yes, I was confused when the check in kiosk spit out 8 boarding pass like pieces of paper…4 boarding passes and 4 drink coupons), and enjoyed some VERY strong morning beverages. Seriously…strongest vodka cranberry I’ve ever had.
Nick slept most of the flight and I splurged on internet and messaged my way across the country. We got into Chicago early, which was nice. Once in Chicago we had a great cheese pizza for lunch from a wood fired oven quick service pizza place. While eating, I couldn’t help but notice that not a single gate in the row I had a view of had a plane at it. Chicago Midway has always been a zoo when I’ve traveled through there, so this was a real wakeup call for me. Revenge travel may be alive and well, but we definitely have a long way to go before we’re back to “normal” on this front.
Because we’d gotten in early, we ended up with about 4 hours to kill at Midway. We found a quiet seating area (seriously…parts of this airport felt like more of a ghost town than Manchester) and chilled there for quite awhile after lunch, before joining that chaos that was the 4 gate area that they seemed to be sending the bulk of the flights through.
Eventually it was time to board. We had even better boarding positions for this flight (A3 and A4 I think). Nick went for closer to the front rather than more legroom for this (shorter) flight so we were in one of the first few rows, to get us out of the metal tube faster in Manchester. This flight was bumpy, but we got our beverages (an equally strong rum and coke for me, jack and coke for Nick) and snack service here too, and somehow passed the time. Thankfully we got into Manchester early too.
Deplaning in Manchester was quick. Luggage retrieval not so much, but still faster than Boston! Once we had our luggage I called mom and she appeared at the curb from the cell phone lot shortly after we walked outside. We loaded her car up and headed for her house, where we transferred luggage to my car, and made our way home (getting stuck in road construction traffic on the way!).
Final thoughts:
We are not Vegas people. I enjoyed it more than Nick, but I just don’t “get it”. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the hotels we stayed in, and the food we ate. There are other shows I’d definitely enjoy seeing. But I don’t understand the draw of the Strip. I’d been worried that I hadn’t allotted enough time for us truly in Vegas, but actually our trip itinerary was great.
Zion was spectacular, but Bryce is just indescribable. Other worldly and amazing are the best I can come up with and even those just don’t seem quite adequate to describe it. Just go there.
Don’t ignore the state parks and the non-national parks. Valley of Fire and Red Rock Canyon were trip highlights too.
It always blows my mind whenever we visit the national parks how many more people are visiting clearly from other countries than from the US. How do Americans not realize the gems we have in this country? This trip was (surprisingly, given travel restrictions) no different.
It was really awesome to get back to crossing states off the never been there list. It’s been a long time!
I was a little worried going into this about how busy the itinerary was given the school year I’ve had, especially since I’m the primary driver for distance drives. I think I ran on adrenaline the whole trip, but it all worked out great, and I’m so glad we were able to cram as much into the trip as we did. It was amazing!
Ventilated Merrill Moab shoes were absolutely the right shoes for all of the outdoors stuff we did.
Late April was a great time, both weather and crowd wise for this trip.
I’m thinking April 2025 for our western national parks trip. I need time to forget how much I hate long flights!
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