We made it to Seattle with no trouble. Not that we saw the view in the photo above since we didn’t have a reason to go outside the airport. Cathy and Karen were almost to Seattle when we arrived, according to what John knew of their flight itinerary. When we landed, I hoped we might see them. As it turned out, once we looked at a map of the Seattle airport, we realized that they were in D terminal where Alaska Air lands and we were in B with Delta. It just wasn’t worth trying to search out another terminal to see them for such a short time.

We left Austin at 6 a.m. Central time for a four-hour flight. Going from Central to Pacific, we lost two hours, so we must have gotten into Seattle about 8 a.m. Pacific time. When we got settled in our gate area, I thought I’d write in my trip journal, and couldn’t find a pen. I laughed at myself for packing a journal and not a pen. (Turns out I was wrong. I had one and just couldn’t find it. Found it later, of course.)

By this time, all the little shops were open. I went to one of those shops that sells everything from snacks to magazines to little gifts for your kids that you forgot to buy anything for. I found a cute, rose-gold colored pen there for $8. Overpriced? Well, it was the airport. It had “Seattle” printed on it in white script and the top was clear with liquid suspended glitter. Hey, I wrote with bling! (Then the blasted thing lasted until the Fairbanks Springhill Suites where it pooped out and I took the cheap-ass, free one from the hotel that’s still working. Figures.)

WAITING

We had a long layover in Seattle. We people-watched and chatted with one loquacious couple who were going on a cruise when they got to Alaska. They had us pinned down with conversation. I wanted to read, but it felt rude to say, “Excuse me, it’s time for me to read now.” Let me tell you, I was certainly happy when another cruising couple sat across from them and the four of them could compare cruises.

Later John said to me, “Why would anyone fly to Fairbanks to go on a cruise? It’s an awfully land-locked city.”

I said, “Maybe it is the closest big-ish airport to a seaport. I bet they put them on buses and take them to some body of water.”

AND WE’RE OFF AGAIN

Finally, we boarded the plane to Fairbanks. Same drill. Get in line. Put my phone with the boarding pass showing on the little reader thing. Drag two bags down the jetway. Once we get to the plane, pick up the heavy 22-inch bag and turn it sideways, so it will go down the aisle to our seats. I’ve found I need to carry it in front of me as I walk down the aisle; it’s too heavy to carry with my back arm. Luckily, we were in something like row 15, so it wasn’t too far to go. Yay, John found overhead bins and we were set. This time John had the window seat and I was in my usual middle seat.

WHO IS THIS STRANGER?

John and I were all settled in our seats and a woman sat next to me on the aisle. We said hello and we talked about why we were going to Fairbanks. She had also overheard conversations in the waiting area of passengers going on cruises and she asked if we were going on a cruise. “No,” I said, “we are going on a Nat Hab tour.” Out of all the people on that flight (and it was a full flight), the person sitting next to me was on the Nat Hab tour with us. What a surprise. We introduced ourselves and her name was Krista. She told us this trip was for her fiftieth birthday present to herself. It’s our fiftieth wedding anniversary trip, I guess. We’d never said it was, but why not call it that? After all, August 2022 was our fiftieth wedding anniversary coming up.

The flight to Fairbanks was uneventful and about 3.5 hours long. I watched another movie, another Sandra Bullock movie called The Lost Island. I say “another” because on Friday night movie night, we watched a Sandra Bullock movie called The Proposal. In the last hour, I watched some HGTV show. I was so ready to not be on airplanes anymore. I was sleepy and my hips hurt from sitting so much.

WE ARRIVE IN FAIRBANKS

The three of us walked through the Fairbanks airport. It is a simple airport with two gates and two luggage carrousels on the bottom level. We went by two glass cases with stuffed bears in them. One was a polar bear and the other was a grizzly. Big old bears! “That’s as close as I’d like to get to a bear,” I said.

We waited for Krista’s bag to come off the airplane at the carousel closest to the doors out to the parking lot. Once her bag came down, we strolled outside to the sidewalk next to a large parking area. Krista called the hotel to send a shuttle to pick us up because she had the phone number on her phone. Meanwhile, we watched people getting picked up by other vans and some getting on large buses to meet their cruises. I poked John, pointed at the buses, and said “See, I was right.”

This photo is of the Fairbanks airport from the parking lot we were watching for our shuttle. We were waiting on that circular porch under the overhang on the right.

It took a full hour and two phone calls to get the shuttle from the hotel to come and get us. I think John held his temper better than he would have if it had been just me with him. Thank goodness for social pressure. On the first call, the hotel front desk person said something about picking us up after dropping off the flight crew. Evidently, the airlines stash their crews there during layovers. Does that mean the Hilton Staybridge Suites is the best hotel in Fairbanks? Maybe the desk clerk forgot because it took a second call to get the shuttle.

As we stood waiting, I noticed the air was very smokey. I expected that. I’d been checking Fairbanks’ weather from home the last two weeks and smoke started showing up in the forecast the week before. Krista said she’d heard it should dissipate in the next few days. I hoped so. The pilot of our plane as we landed mentioned the smoke and said it had cut visibility down to about a mile.

The shuttle finally picked us up and it was just the three of us. Cathy and Karen weren’t getting in for another couple of hours. The driver was a young woman who told us a little about Fairbanks. Mostly she told us that on a Sunday there were very few restaurants open within walking distance of the hotel. We could eat at the hotel restaurant or walk to the pizza place. Helpful information.

AT THE HOTEL, FINALLY

Along with our room key card, the desk clerk gave us each a rapid Covid test kit. Oh, joy. Krista, John and I went up to the third floor. Her room was just down the hall from ours. The room was indeed a suite, shotgun though it was. From the door, we walked into the “living room” with a sofa to the left and the “kitchen” area to the right. The kitchen had a refrigerator and a microwave oven that we would come to appreciate. Next was the bathroom on the right and then into the bedroom with two queen beds facing a large screen TV on a dresser.

I checked out the view from our window at the end of the room. Across the street from the hotel parking lot was Golden Heart Park, which is along the Chena River. The picture below is one John took of a sculpture we saw the next day in the park. Alaska.org says this about it: The statue is Malcolm Alexander’s “Unknown First Family,” which in his words is “Portraying the family of all mankind, the family of Fairbanks, and the nuclear family, let this statue symbolize, for families present and future, the pride and dignity of this great land.”

The first thing I did after we got all our stuff settled was take a nap. I got out my sleep mask and my earbuds to listen to a book as I fell asleep. I reveled in being able to stretch out all my plane cramped muscles. Two beds were nice; John took one to read his iPad while I slept in the other bed. The Fitbit said I had more than 7,000 steps though sometimes it mistakes vehicular motion and vibration for steps. In my own defense, I did walk through a lot of airports that day. I might have actually walked 7,000 steps. I definitely felt better after the nap.

Next up: dinner