Oh the joys of traveling!

So, I'm not sure how many people know (or care) that we have volcanoes in Alaska. And recently, one of them has been acting up. Mount Redoubt to be specific. She started rumbling and made the news right around Christmastime. I remember because I had multiple friends traveling during the holidays that I was worried for because if an eruption should occur, depending on winds, it shuts down our airport...one of the few things that can. Because Mt. Redoubt had been rumbling and making noise for so long with no major occurrences, Steve and I left for Vegas on Saturday, March 21st without a care in the world.

Early Monday morning, I get a text message from a friend here in Anchorage letting me know that Redoubt had finally erupted.




Ash wasn't supposed to be heading to Anchorage, so things still looked good. Well, the last time Mt. Redoubt started erupting, she was active off-and-on for 4 months...this time appears to be following suite. We kept checking the AVO (Alaska Volcano Observatory) website to keep abreast of the events, but mostly just continued having a good time while vacationing in Vegas with our friends.

We were scheduled to fly out on Friday afternoon and get back into Anchorage around midnight on Friday. Well...that didn't happen. We got to Seattle and found out she had erupted again and this time the ash plume was heading for Anchorage. Thus we were stuck in Seattle. And because so many people had already been affected by the cancelled flights earlier in the week, the earliest we could get out was Sunday night with a flight to Fairbanks, a five and a half hour layover there, and then finally get to Anchorage at 7 am on Monday. The bonus, they wouldn't give us our luggage back because they were trying to fly the bags back up whenever they could, so we were left with only our carry-on stuff. Which meant we had to go shopping again to get fun things like socks and underwear and toiletries that you can't bring in your carry-on. Fun fun!

So Sunday rolls around. We do get out of Seattle. But when we get to Fairbanks we get kicked out of the secured part of the airport because they shut down overnight, at 3:45am look at the flight boards to see that our flight has been cancelled even though there hadn't been any eruptions (I overheard the lady at the counter saying they didn't have a crew), have to rebook on a later flight and end up not getting home until a little after 10am on Monday. Did I mention we didn't sleep at all in the Fairbanks terminal? I was so tired by the time we got home, I basically slept from 11:30 until the next morning with a few lucid breaks for eating. Work was not an easy task on Tuesday morning.

I have to admit, we had an amazing vacation. We did tons of shopping, ate at fabulous restaurants, and really had a great time hanging out with our friends Chris and Erin. This was my first 'couples' vacation and I will totally be down for doing so again...just not anytime while the volcano is rumbling....