OK! Its time to get this thing started. First off, an introductory pic so you know who your following around:
Our flight left late on a Wednesday afternoon. We usually like to leave early morning, but I had wanted to get almost a full work week in (a full work week for me is 40 hours, and I can get those hours in anytime I want during the week days). This didn't really work out for me so well since the office I am doing contract work with was shut down for Memorial Day on Monday, so I couldn't work and I was only able to get about 16 hours instead of close to 30. But what are you gonna do.
I left work around 1 pm. We had set our absolute must leave for the airport time at 3p m.
We are notorious for cutting flights close and we had to drop the car off at the airport lot, so we wanted to make sure we had time.
I had done very little packing the night before (pshh, who needs to be prepared), so I had a lot of running around and shouting about items' locations when I got home.
Brian had all the camping stuff packed up and most of his clothes so that helped.
Much to my surprise, we had Roary (the car) all loaded up and ready to go by 3:05. Not bad!
We only live 10 minutes from the airport so that was also super convenient.
Security was kind of weird. Let me start this off by stating that this was my day to encounter mean and out of line employees. Sounds great, right?
There was one woman ahead of us, then Brian and I were literally the only ones in sight of the scanning belt. We already had our shoes off and our laptops/tablets out ready to go.
The woman in front of us was loading up the belt and had left a little bit of space, so we started to use that to load our stuff onto the belt. The second the woman left, the security agent ambled up to me and said something along the lines of how he always found it helpful to everyone else if people loaded their stuff up toward the middle/end of the belt.
I looked behind us to make sure no one else had arrived (they hadn't) and then I gave him a really weird look (I am pretty good at making weird faces). I kind of thought he'd been joking but he hadn't really sounded very jokey. After I shot him the weird look he then continued to talk to me and said that I had real pretty red hair and that it'd be a crime if I ever dyed it. I kind of was like 'haha, ok thanks' and quickly moved on.
In retrospect, it doesn't really sound creepy to relate the story, but it was just a super weird situation. At first it sounded like he was yelling at me for not moving along fast enough, then he gives a compliment that probably wouldn't normally be creepy but it definitely was coming after his first weird statement. I dunno, guess you woulda had to have been there.
Brian also had a strange encounter with him in line for Starbucks, so who knows what his deal was.
We had a nice long wait at the Southwest gate and then we got to board, we were in the very beginning of B group so we got seats about midway back and we took off right at 5:25.
It was a pretty uneventful flight and before we knew it we were touching down in Chicago at 5:35 (pretty short flight, right??). We weren't leaving from Chicago until 8:30. The layover really wasn't that bad since we needed dinner. We looked all over the airport and finally settled on this little deli that turned out to be amazing!! Seriously it was one of my favorite meals of the trip, and that is not to say the other meals weren't great. Wish I had a picture. Sorry
Looks like I really just don't take a lot of departure day pictures.
We were in the end of A group for our next flight, so we got awesome seats. I think Brian slept a bit and I read my new library book, The Maze Runner, which I was really enjoying.
Finally we arrived in Phoenix right on time at 10:10 pm. We were both pretty tired since it was 1 am our time, so we quickly got our luggage and boarded the bus to the rental car station. I was anxious to see what Phoenix looked like since we'd only ever stopped here for connecting flights on to LA/San Diego.
The rental cars all seemed to be in the same station, and it took us about 10 minutes to drive there on the bus from the airport.
Buckeye Street!! yay!!
Here comes employee jerk experience number 2 of the day.
Brian sat back on a bench with all our bags since my name was on the rental car. I had booked with Advantage through Expedia and got a rate of $109 for an economy car for 4 full days and some sort of combo of extra hours.
I get called up and am having a pretty pleasant interaction with the sales guy until he started in on the up sell. And guys, I am used to up selling at car rental desks, I am sure we all are. But this guy took the cake.
He asked where I was headed. I told him we were first headed to the Grand Canyon then we were kinda just going to go all around. He tells me very seriously that my little economy car won't be able to make it to the GC. I look at him funny and say I'm sure it'll be fine. Then he asks if I have roadside assistance and I am like yeah...then he says good because your going to need it. I send thousands of people in rental cars to the GC each year and I know for a fact that our economy car can't make it. Ironic point: he wanted me to upgrade to the mid size car, which I believe was still a V4 that had a .2 bigger liter
engine, and that probably weighed a good couple hundred pounds more. At this point I helplessly called for Brian. I knew there wasn't a big difference between the 2 cars and that I still wanted the economy but he wasn't letting it go and it was 1 am (our time) and I was exhausted and just wanted to leave.
After the fact, I kinda think he was just blatantly lying to me because he didn't see Brian with me and thought I was just a little girl who wouldn't know enough about cars to realize that he was lying to my face. Do I still sound angry about this? Yeah, I think I am.
Brian came over, listened to the situation and laughed at him and said we'll be fine, we'll take the economy. The sales guy mumbled through the rest of the transaction and ended up charging me for the gas option, which I never agreed to but didn't realize until we were downstairs in the garage ready to leave.
I was really not happy about this. I understand up selling, I'm fine with it. Usually the car sales people point out how much luggage we have and how we'd be a lot more comfortable in the mid size. Saying that is fine with me. Telling me that the economy car has no chance of driving to the GC is a blatant lie (we made it just fine, thank you very much sales guy). I was not pleased with him at all and ended up writing a very strongly worded letter once we got home.
We ended up with a nice little Nissan Versa who we promptly named Little Big Engine, in honor of his engine which would surely never get us to the GC. We left the garage and headed for our first stop: Flagstaff. Brian had booked a pretty cheap motel for that first night. We wanted to get some of the distance traveled in between Phoenix and the GC, and Flagstaff looked like a good stopping point.
And it would have been...had it not already been after 1 in the morning for us and a 2 hour drive. The drive was pretty miserable. It was dark so I couldn't see any of my surroundings and I really wanted to. Then I was exhausted. Then we had to sit for 20 minutes while someone did some sort of blasting on the hillside.
We finally made it to our little hotel, checked in, unpacked, and were instantly asleep.
Geez...it sounds like this trip really sucked. But honestly, it was just this first day of travel. It was a really great trip! And now that I've got all the traveling out of the way, we can start with the good stuff! And the pictures!
Highlights of the coming day:
-we eat at our first Route 66 diner!
-we arrive at the Grand Canyon!
Looking forward to reading along!
