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We’re Back…

After a pretty long day of traveling, we are safe and sound back at home. When we left our hotel in Anchorage at about 5:30 AM yesterday, it was around 50 degrees. We flew to Chicago first. The flight should have been five hours and 45 minutes but ended up being closer to six and a half hours because of the weather (lots of thunderstorms in the area). Arriving at O’Hare after the peace and tranquility of Alaska was quite a shock to the system. Nothing like a quick jolt of reality. And we were still in the Midwest!

We boarded our plane bound for Baltimore at about 6:20 PM. The A/C was not working, so we had to sit in a hot airplane waiting for it to be fixed. That was about a 30-40 minute delay. Then after it was fixed and we pulled away from the gate, we had to sit on the runway waiting for more thunderstorms to pass before we could take off. The temperature in the plane reached a stifling 82 degrees (at foot level, which is where my thermometer key chain was). Now, that is not horribly hot, but inside an airplane with 100 other people and very little air moving was rather unpleasant. After about a 25-minute wait, we took off. Although there were storms in Baltimore, too, it was clear enough for us to land. We finally made it home around 10:30. It was in the upper 70s and quite humid. And it is supposed to hit 97 degrees today!

The dogs were quite excited to see us. I think they thought we abandoned them for good. Eric said that CeCe, our neurotic dog, had diarrhea for at least a week because she was upset about our being gone.

It is nice to be home, but I sure wish we could have brought the weather with us.

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"Extreme Heat is in Store"

Alaska has been fabulous. As anxious as we both are to get home to our families, I am absolutely dreading the thought of returning to Maryland in the midst of a record-breaking heat spell. “Extreme Heat”?!? Temperatures well into the nineties?!?

It was about 45 degrees this morning when we left for breakfast at 7:00 AM. After breakfast, we shopped for awhile. On the way back to the room, we were both happy to be wearing jackets. The high today was about 65 degrees. And there were people out and about EVERYWHERE taking advantage of the heat wave.

I could very easily get used to year-round cool weather. Mike says no way could he live here. I told him, “I’ll miss you.”

As an aside, June’s daughter Leah said they went swimming recently. She thought it was really cool that they could jump off of an iceberg into the lake. Not an iceberg, literally, just the lake ice that hadn’t yet melted. This was probably within the last week or so. Can you imagine how COLD that water is?

Believe it or not, I didn’t take any pictures today. There’s no link if you click on the moose. Mike was the shutterbug. He took three pictures, and they were all of me with various things. The picture at left pretty much sums up our activity for the day.

Aside from shopping, we each did some reading. One of us napped. The other continued reading/relaxing. Then we went on a “moose hunt” to Kincaid Park in Anchorage for urban moose (we saw two; we’d see more if we went later in the day instead of midday). Finally, we decided we should eat. And we stumbled upon La Cabana, a Mexican restaurant in downtown Anchorage with yummy food and tasty margaritas. A perfect end to our perfect vacation.