3/13 Travel Day (fun! fun!)

After pulling an all nighter, we all met at 3:15 am to drive to the airport. We checked in and everything seemed fine until we realized our flight was delayed, so Angela, Connie and I spent roughly 45 minutes discussing our problem with the airline officials, eventually to find out that we would likely be stuck in Salt Lake City for the day because we’d miss our connecting flight ( only two flights go into Casper, WY a day from Delta).

Though it gave Angela, Connie and I a headache for about an hour and a half, we finally figured out that they could hold our connector flight in Salt Lake City, since it was delayed too (not to mention, we filled up about half of the flight seats). We got free breakfast vouchers out of it though, so it was worth the headache.

We finally make it to Salt Lake City and are rushed over to our connecting flight. I asked the gate attendant to make sure our bags were on our connecting flight and she assured me that they'd "get there before we would". This sounded too good to be true, and it turned out to be, as we reached Casper, WY, to find that our bags hadn't made it.

We had planned to drive straight to Re-member that day/evening but we stayed in Casper the evening for our bags to be brought to us (and still, not all our bags made it to the hotel that evening). Suffice to say, I never want to fly Delta airlines again if I can help it.

There were some good things about the day though. First, the majority of mishaps (minus the flat tire) happened the first day of the trip (as opposed to something each day). Second, we made it to Wyoming in one day when we inititially feared we wouldn't. Lastly, I got to drive a nice big Suburban! I'm definitely going to have to buy one when I get older and I have Suburban gas money.

--Randall

After finishing some last minute assignments and packing, it was 3am and I was ready to begin my spring break. I met my fellow ASBers with sleepy eyes, yawns, and a bag filled with wool socks and long underwear. We arrived at Dulles with plenty of time to spare for our 7am flight to Salt Lake City, Utah, only to learn that our flight was delayed two hours. This was a problem as we needed to make a connecting flight to Casper, Wyoming. After a rousing game of poker-keeno, we took a brief nap, and then boarded our plane.

In Salt Lake City, airport staff met us at the arrival gate with carts to bring us to the plane to Casper, which they had delayed for us. And yes…riding those carts is as cool as it looks. We were greeted by dirty looks as we boarded the 50 person plane, but they seemed more understanding when we told them our story. We finally arrived in Casper, Wyoming, which according to a sign at the airport is the “Adventure Capital of Wyoming,” and it did not disappoint. We learned that while Delta had made sure we made it on the plane, they had not been as meticulous with our luggage.

So instead of driving to Pine Ridge as planned, we spent the night in Casper. We ate an early dinner at a diner near our motel, surrounded by cigarette smoke. I'm so used to the smoking ban in restaurants that it was really quite a culture shock. We checked into the motel and everyone in my room passed out before 7pm. I woke up when Samira said it was 3am and our bags had arrived at the motel. Luckily she had forgotten to change the time on her cell to account for both the time change and daylight savings. It was midnight, we finally had our toothbrushes, and we had 6 hours before we had to wake up and start our long drive to Pine Ridge.

--Kaitlyn