This year for vacation, I had originally planned on walking the Camino again, this time with my wife! Unfortunately, Spain and most of the places along the Camino were not fully open, nor were military space available flights... available. Pardon the seeming redundancy. Instead, my wife had expressed a desire to either visit Alaska or the United States Northwest. We opted for the Northwest, and I spent a good bit of time exploring possible sights. After showing this info to my wife, along with locations of nearby KOAs, I started making reservations and developing web pages for each place.
A quick rundown before I really start Day 1. We fly out of Greenville/Spartanburg International Airport on July 12th at 6am, change planes at Dallas/Fort Worth, and arrive at Boise Idahos airport around 11am, Mountain Time. We then will rent a car from Enterprise, and drive a giant loop to Twin Falls in Idaho, Livingston in Montana (Yellowstone), Missoula in Montana, Spokane in Washington, The Olympic Peninsula near Seattle, then down the Oregon Coast and back to Boise to return our car and fly back home on July 29th. You will have to read my future blogs to know what
OK, now for Day 1 of our Great Northwest adventure. I had to work a normal Sunday at Hertz, getting home around 7pm, even though we would be catching our flight to Boise at 6am Monday. I was able to get to bed around midnight instead of my usual 1 or 2am. My wife Manoli, who usually falls asleep watching TV around 10pm or so, was still up when I got to bed, from being anxious I imagine. We woke up just after 4am, packed up the car and headed to GSP airport. I work for Hertz Rental Car at GSP, but had never used the airport for travel. The roads were pretty empty at 4:30am and we arrived at the rental car garage just before 5am. I was able to park our car in the rental car garage, as a Hertz employee, saving the cost of parking or bothering one of our daughters at this hour.
Everything had gone well, until we reached the American Airlines area and saw the dozens and dozens of people already waiting in line. The wait was somewhat eased when they announced that domestic travelers could
use a different line. We quickly got our tickets, paid an extra 30 bucks for our checked bags (which I thought Id already paid for), and headed for security and our gate, A1. We almost got delayed again when the TSA guy checked my ID and told me I had to go back downstairs to the AA counter because my personal flight information was not found in Fortunately, another agent saw he was having trouble and showed him how to verify my ID manually. Apparently the barcode on my SC Drivers License was too worn to be scanned. When we reached our gate, they were already boarding. Our tickets were in group 8, so we still had time and I was able to buy a cold coffee drink for the flight. Also, apparently the plane was out of overhead luggage space when they reached our group 8, but again we lucked out because they told us our bags were okay!
Apparently our trip was not going to be without its share of hiccups, as we ended up taking off over 20 minutes late, and our connecting flight in Dallas was originally a bit short already. at 45
minutes! We landed in at Dallas, at Gate 36, and found out that luckily our connecting flight was departing from nearby Gate 32, since they again were already boarding when we got there! After another short flight, just under 3 hours, and another time zone to the West, we set down at Boises airport, quite tired already since wed slept little, eaten less, and as usual couldnt even nap much on the planes.
Boises airport is pretty much typical of a medium sized, busy airport. We quickly found our luggage and sat down to see about an Uber ride to the Enterprise car rental place in downtown Boise. Wed opted for this after we saw how much more expensive the airport Enterprise was, figuring they could pick us up at the airport.
