Midwest Vacation

We decided to fly up to the Quad Cities to suprise my family since we hadn't been there for almost a year. Since last Sunday was Father's Day, Wednesday was Barbara's birthday, and Grandma Beery's, Mom's and Angela's birthdays were all coming up, we figured it was a good time to suprise them all (and of course to give them all their presents).

Our trip began with with a rocky start. We were flying non-rev and their had apparently been an emergency landing in Phoenix earlier in the afternoon. Quite a few of the passenger going from Las Vegas and Phoenix to Chicago had been reaccomodated. Since we were scheduled on the last flight to Chicago it looked like we weren't going to get out at all.

As it ended up, we got on the plane, and there were still a few empty seats. At first I was crammed between two people and Teresa was in the middle seat 1 row behind me. Before we even taxied to the runway, the flight attendants let us move around. As it ended up, both the people in Teresa's row moved to different spots, and I was able to to move to the row with Teresa. That meant all of us in the two rows ended up being in rows with only two people instead of packed in like sardines with 3.

The flight was pretty uneventful, and we landed at about 3am CST. After grabbing our luggage, I called the Dollar rental number and it said to go outside and wait for a van to pick us up. We waited outside until about 4am and I finally called the 800 number for Dollar and told them I was still waiting. 10 minutes later the van showed up to pick us up and the driver told us America West must have added a flight because they never arrived that late before. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I knew different.

We got to the rental car lot, went inside, and I gave the guy my licenses and credit card. He printed out the papers and told me to sign. Since it was about 4:20 am, I didn't even notice that he never bother to ask us about insurance. He did however inform me that it was an additional $9/day to allow Teresa to drive. One of the more stupid decisions that I made on the trip was to pass on that option. Big mistake!

By 4:30 am we were on the freeway heading to the Quad Cities, and man was I tired.

About 5:30 we stopped at the DeKalb Oasis (McDonalds) to get some breakfast and more importantly caffeine. Then it was off to Davenport.

By 7:30 we were in the Quad Cities so we decided to give it a shot and see if the Best Western we were supposed to stay at, had our room available that early. It wasn't very likely, but we didn't have anything to lose.

Ends up they had it ready. Awesome! So we took a badly needed nap for a couple hours.