My AZ Experience, Day 1: What a Rocky Start

What's a start to a family vacation without some early drama to start everything off, am I right?!

Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

I was awakened by my father, and his hurry up antics, as I already told him the night before that I had my alarm set for 7:30am sharp. He awoke me from my slumber at exactly 7:25, and if you are like myself, you CRAVE those extra 5 minutes of sleep. So as you could imagine I was not a happy camper right out of the gate. I soon got over my morning lividness once I saw this man made me a whole pot of coffee for myself (I'm a coffee addict, and have no shame xD).

After all of the packing was said and done, we had to run our dog down to the dog kennel. Usually we leave her inside of the garage, but since the highs in MN weren't expected to make it over 0 degrees F we decided it would be best for our pupper to spend the next few days in a nice warm kennel. As we head out to take her to the kennel, my father and I do a mental check of all of her belongings that she needs for the kennel. We got about half way there and we noticed something... WE FORGOT THE DOG!! We do a FAST 180 right in the middle of the road, and just started laughing at each other. How could we forget the most important thing needed for the dog kennel; the dog!!

Fast forward to the airport, parking went cleanly, we get to our terminal without any delay, and things are looking like they are going to go more smoothly than they did this morning. Oh boy was I dead wrong.

We get to our gate to find out that our flight is delayed by 30 minutes, no big deal. At this point it's my father, sister, and myself. So we decided to grab a bite to eat at this place called the "Red Cow". It was a quant little burger with the BEST ketchup sauce mixture that tasted like a combination of ketchup, BBQ sauce, and some spices to give it a little kick. They called it their "Red Sauce" . I think it may have been the best sauce I've ever put on a burger hands down.

After our little burgers, we get back to our gate to figure out that it's delayed ANOTHER 30 minutes, so as most airline passengers do we sit and wait.. and wait.. and wait.. until finally we hear the voice over the intercom announce that it is time to start loading. So we all look at each other and DASH to the front of the line, looking like a bunch of novice tourists lol.

This is where the real fun begins

Fast forward to us finally getting to our seats, and BAM we have little tv's at each of our seats that have movies, games, tv shows INCLUDED! So I thought to myself "damn this is going to be a quick and painless flight"... Oh but it was the exact opposite.

After we sit down and get comfortable, we hear our pilot tell us that maintenance has to fill one of our engines with some more oil or something of that nature. That took about 15-20 minutes.

Then the pilot comes on the speaker again saying that maintenance has to come on board to sign some paperwork about what they did to the plane. You think that would be a quick and easy thing.

NOPE, that took 30 minutes to do! 30 MINUTES!! How is that even possible?? At this point, we are an hour and a half behind our intended takeoff time. We finally get out on the runway when the pilot, yet again, comes over the loud speaker to announce the great news to all of us.

Ladies and gentlemen, we seem to have a problem with our 2nd left engine and will need to go back to the terminal.

Almost as in unison, everyone let out a collective sigh of disbelief.

Here's a photo of the MSP runway about 15 seconds before the pilot came on the intercom

We finally get out of the airplane for maintenance to check, and damnit I left my hat on the plane.. My favorite hat. I was distraught.. but thank the heavens up above, a kind flight attendant's soul that went back on the plane that I was forbidden to step foot on for some reason.

We spent a solid hour in the terminal waiting to see if they would be able to fix our plane so we could still make it to AZ. At this point, it was about 7:30pm, four hours after we were initially suppose to leave.. Time goes twice as slow when you're at an airport, trust me. After that hour had surpassed, a woman's voice came over the intercom saying that we were able to get back on the plane and depart. Just like in unison on the plane, the crowd erupted in a mixture of cheers and claps. This eruption of the crowd overtook what the lady was saying over the intercom, which was comical in my opinion!

We get back on the plane, and we didn't actually take off for another 30 minutes. At this point, I was holding my breath for the pilot to come back on the speaker system and tell us MORE bad news. Fortunately, that didn't happen and we were airborne before long. It was a three and a half hour flight, which wasn't too bad since we had movies to watch.

Phoenix in all its beauty, at night

We land in the airport around 10pm AZ time, and to put the cherry on top for our rough start, our luggage was LITERALLY the last two bags to come out of the baggage claim! We finally get to our resort about an hour later and finally it's time to relax, aka sleep haha.

Here's a pic of the view we have from our balcony the morning after

Well folks, that's our hectic day in a nutshell.. Today is going awesome and I'll post again tomorrow if this one does well. I genuinely enjoyed writing this post, and I hope some of you laughed/enjoyed it as well! Give your boy an upvote please and thank you :)

Take a look at the post I made last night about new ideas for me to write upon/further your understanding on any topic of your choice!

As Always, Stay Classy Steemians