The Journey Home

It started too early in the morning and didn’t really end for two days. I set the alarm for 6 AM after being up watching the last World Stage Company show featuring the team leader Florance and then finished packing.

I set the alarm early because I didn’t really know when we had our shuttle bus to the airport. The Navigator App told us it was at 8:45 but the letter with the baggage tags had us going out earlier. I went to Guest Services who told me to go to Shorex who blamed Seattle for the mix-up. Playing it safe we were ready to get off at around 7:45 to clear customs and get an 8:15 shuttle. As it happened, we got off the ship at about 8:45 and were at the airport before 9:30 for a scheduled 12:45 flight, which ended up running late.

I watched the sunrise, which was directly in front of the hip, on the bow camera, with the sun forming a halo around a San Diego Building. The traditional lineup of staff was there to wave us off the ship.

The airport was more crowded than we expected on a Tuesday. Apparently, several people stayed with grandma in San Diego for a day after Easter and were leaving on Tuesday. All the three planes we rode were packed full.

On the plane we saw baggage from our departure group, pink 3, loaded on boars. We had more bags than we should have had because at the beginning of the cruise Luggage Forward had lost track of our bags and when we left Sitka, we did not know if they would find them, so we had a second complement of stuff. We shipped the extra bags with luggage forward as well as the original, paying the extra cost. In Hawaii we had bought the remaining air tags that the Honolulu Best Buy had, and although it was against Luggage Forward’s rules we tagged each bag so I could follow their progress and tell Luggage Forward where to find them in case they lost them again.

Taxing to the runway we got one last view of Zaandam.

We flew out of San Diego and over the California Coast before heading inland. Over Bakersfield we began to see the snow capped Sierras.

We had great views of Mt. Renier flying into Seattle and then sat for four hours in the Alaska Airlines Lounge waiting for the Alaska Airline’s late milk run to Juneau, stopping at Ketchikan.

We had enough light to enjoy the coastal mountains and arrived in Ketchikan in time for the sunset.

From there it was a short hop to Juneau, changing planes in Juneau for Sitka. We arrived just before 11PM. All our checked bags made it. Usually, we would have gone home but Sitka had an unusual winter, nearly 10 feet of snow between November and April.

Our house watcher had told us the week before there was still three feet of packed snow in our steep driveway and no one could plow it since we hadn’t kept up all winter. He told us that the plow removed the berm at the bottom and cleared a place for us to park a car at the bottom but our cars were stuck at the top.

So, we rented a 4WD GMC truck and got a room at the Aspen Inn and waited for morning to check out our driveway.

The Wednesday morning, we drove home. There had been a couple of days of 40 degree rain so we were able to get the rig mostly up the hill and got our checked bags in the house. But our cars were still snowed in so we stayed another night in the hotel and extended the rental of the truck until Saturday.

The Thursday it was sunny and we got the rig all the way up but still could not get our cars out but we checked out of the hotel, went to the senior coffee hour to reacquaint ourselves with our friends and then I went to visit “My Log” in the Sitka National Historical Park. “My log” escaped from a log boom headed to the pulp mill sometime in the ‘70s and I have photographically documented its decay and fostering new life for more than a decade. On this sunny day it was springing forth with new life. I knew I was home.

Friday our little red suitcase came home, along with big red. The others were still in Anchorage.

On Saturday, the snow had melted more and with a little help from us we got our cars and returned the rentals. Church on Sunday and on Monday, the rest of our bags came home and brought more snow with them. Welcome home.