From Houston to Sydney 2013

From Houston

to Sydney

2013

Although today has been a very long day, it can be described fairly succinctly – we spent the day travelling from Bozeman (Montana) to Chicago (Illinois). 

The day began early when my alarm sounded at 3:45 am.  We left the hotel at 4:40 am and arrived at Bozeman Airport at a little before 5 am, which was perfect timing for our 6:10 am departure.  We needed all the time we had as the airport was surprisingly busy and the line for security checks was very long.

The journey involved two flights; a direct flight from Bozeman to Chicago would have taken less time, but it would have been more expensive and it would have been on a far less comfortable plane.

Our first flight was to Seattle on an Horizon Airlines Bombardier Dash 8-Q400, which proved to be a surprisingly quiet, spacious and comfortable flight of a little over an hour and half duration.  If we had been located on the port side of the aircraft we would have had magnificent views of snow-covered Mount Rainier, but our views of Seattle from the starboard side were impressive nonetheless.

We had a three hour layover in Seattle, during which I felt I was in aircraft spotters’ heaven as I watched the fascinating range of planes taking off, landing and taxiing through the large panoramic windows of the terminal.

Our second flight was a three and a half hour journey on an American Airlines Boeing 737, which provided superb views of the terrain below – first the Cascade Mountains, then the plains of Montana (ironically flying directly over Bozeman), then the plans of South Dakota before coming in to Chicago at a little before 6 pm (local time).

Sometimes a day of travel can be little more than moving from one place to another.  Today’s flight from Seattle to Chicago was much more than that – it may have fallen short of a field study, but the views were absolutely magnificent.

We arrived in Chicago to find that Di’s luggage arrived with us but mine did not.  However, compared with most times that my luggage goes missing, this episode had a speedier happy ending.  I reported the missing baggage at the American Airlines desk, and after a few quick clicks on the computer keyboard, it emerged that my luggage had arrived on an earlier flight from Seattle and was sitting in a storage room waiting for my arrival.

We took an airport shuttle from the airport to our hotel in downtown Chicago, a journey that took about 45 minutes and gave us an excellent experience of the traffic jams that are a feature of Chicago’s rush hour traffic (yes, on a Sunday afternoon!). 

We are both hoping for a good sleep tonight to prepare for a full day’s looking around Chicago tomorrow.

Day 9 - Bozeman to Chicago

Sunday

14 July 2013