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Cathy & Todd Essick

California Adventure

Two flights, three delays, and four gate changes.



In August, we usually go on vacation. Sometimes it's a short camping trip, and other times it's something more exciting. This year, we chose to fly to California to visit our son, Clayton, who is stationed in the Air Force there. This is his first base after completing basic training last September and tech school this spring.


We woke up bright and early at 1:30 am on day one in order to get to our 5 am flight out of Des Moines. All was going great until we got about a mile from home, and I received an alert that our flight was late and changed to 10 am, which was going to cause us to miss our connecting flight from Dallas to Sacramento, which bumped us to a 9 pm flight.


Back home, we tried but failed to get some sleep. At 7:30 am, we were off again to Des Moines. Our 10 am flight to Dallas took off on time, and we arrived in Dallas at noon. If you haven't flown into Dallas, it is freaking huge. We headed to the gate from which our next flight was to depart so we knew where we needed to be before finding some food and wandering around for a while. We decided to eat at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant and have pizza for lunch. Not impressed but it was sufficient.



While we were wandering after lunch, we got another alert that our departure gate had changed. So off we walked and walked and walked to the new gate. We sat and watched people, read and stared at our phones for a few hours. By the time we were ready to grab some supper, our flight was delayed from 9 pm to 10 pm.



Guess what? Gate change alert. Again. This time, we had to get on the train to get to the next terminal. We found the new gate and went to Maggiano's for some of the best ravioli we have ever had. Now, waddling from the huge supper, we made our way to the gate.



Another freaking alert. Our gate changed. Back on the train, and at 10pm, we finally departed from Dallas. We landed in Sacramento at 11 pm Western time (1am Central), nearing our 24 hours of being awake. Picked up our rental car and made the 45-minute drive to our hotel in Vacaville, which was about 15 minutes from Travis Air Force Base. Finally got to bed at about 2:30 am. What. A. Day.



Stay tuned for the adventures of day  2


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