WELCH FAMILY: Durango-an unplanned vacation

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Durango-an unplanned vacation

I have had a couple of National Lampoon type vacations in my life. Someday I will document the worst one. I need to record it for posterity, so they can laugh about it. We didn't laugh at the time, but have a lot in all the years since. We realize it was the craziness of it all that made it memorable.

But our most recent vacation wasn't supposed to be one of these crazy types. It had been a quickly planned and anxiously awaited trip. Curtis's parents had called us in the first part of May and told us that they would like to let us have their Honda Accord as they were purchasing a newer, taller car. They wanted to know how they could get it to us and Curtis and I jumped at the chance to fly to Georgia for a visit and then take a cross-country drive home, just the two of us. It was going to be like an unforeseen 2nd Honeymoon. At least that's what we thought....

We were scheduled to fly out of Durango on June 2, the morning after we got back from Provo. I had arranged for my mom to drive us to Durango and drop us off since we wouldn't be flying back to pick up a vehicle. That part went smoothly. Then we got in the line to check in and get our boarding passes. The lines weren't moving very quickly, but we thought we were fine. All of a sudden, a guy behind the counter said, "Counter's closed. If you're in line to fly on Flight---, you're late. If you do not have your boarding passes by 45 minutes before flight time, you will not be allowed to fly."

There was quite an uproar. We stood there stunned. We had been in line on time, but now we were not going to make our flight. Curtis was very calm, when I wanted to be very angry. I thought it was unfair of them to not tell people of these rules when they book a flight. We don't fly often and had no idea that this was the rule. But you know what they say about ignorance of the law.....it didn't matter, we were not getting on that flight.

Then the bombshell, their next flight out was on Wed. What? What were we supposed to do? We had no car, no way to go home, no way to get to town. nothing. It was a very strange feeling. We spent several hours in the airport trying to decide what the best thing to do was. Should we call my mom? No, she was already on her way to Bluff...Should we call Cambria and have her come get us and then we'd try again on Wed? No. We'd already gotten things all set up of them and they were off and running. I didn't really want to stop and have to start that all over again...Should we try to fly on another airline? No. They wanted about $1000-1200 for last minute tickets...that was not in our budget.

We ended up rescheduling for the Wed. flight (another $100) and renting a car (more $) and getting a hotel for 2 nights in Durango. Our plan had been to take 4 days driving home, but we decided to split up those days and use 2 of them before we ever flew to GA. We would just have to reroute our trip home and do it faster than planned. It would be fine, just not according to plan. Which is very typical of our lives!

Curtis at the ticket counters trying to get things figured out. The guys were more than happy to help because
Curtis was so nice and was not exhibiting anger at the situation.