The Endless Vacation

Have you ever fantasized that you could just go on vacation forever? We began to think we'd done just that, yesterday, as we attempted to come back to Nevada from Washington D.C.

We spent the morning at the Jefferson Memorial, then the Kennedy Center, and, after slowly driving past the Big Pencil again, we headed to Virginia to turn in the rental car, and check in for our flight home. But, unlike most of the visits to D.C. in the ten years I lived in Maryland, we couldn't seem to find the right road to get across the Potomac River. It began to be hilarious. Usually our attempts (Cool Guy and I) to get out of the District of Columbia and head south to Maryland were thwarted by the obtuse road signage there and we'd circle across the river to Virginia, then back past the Lincoln Memorial a couple of times before we'd finally figure out the correct exit to go home. Well, yesterday, I figured this would be easy! After all, it always took such an effort to prevent our inadvertent trips to Virginia. But somehow I kept missing the bridge exits, and we circled the monuments on the Maryland side in a vain attempt to get across the river. It was foreshadowing.

At last, we got to the airport, turned in the car, checked our bags, ordered some lunch, and leisurely waited for the boarding announcement. And it came, and we got on, and we buckled our seat belts, and we backed away from the gate, and we stopped. There are often afternoon thunderstorms along the east coast that interrupt air travel, and our flight to Charleston, NC, had become victim of just such weather. We were informed that we'd be sitting there on the taxiway for a while. But, it was only about 30 minutes. At last we were airborne.

But soon, our 55 minute flight to North Carolina turned into a nearly four hour circling, weaving, bobbing, stalling for time, extravaganza. We were diverted to Charlotte, SC, where we landed and refueled. This was good news to five people on our flight. Charlotte was their ultimate destination that night, so they just got off the plane. I think their luggage had to come the next day, but maybe someone rustled around in the hold and got it for them. The flight attendants were passing out cookies to everyone, and drinks of water, and we were milling around the plane, chatting. After an hour, we finally were cleared to go to North Carolina.

Well, most of us had a connection we had missed by now. So, when we set down in Charleston, the announcement was to check with the airline people right inside the terminal. They asked our names, handed us new boarding passes for the last flight to Las Vegas that night and said, "Put on your track shoes, girls." We ran from Gate A 10 to Gate B 7 (yes, running--our week of hiking through D.C. had toughened us up!) and slid into our seats, and five minutes later we were headed for Vegas, Baby! Whoo Hoo!!

So, when we arrived at 12:30 in Las Vegas, it was really 3:30 in our exhausted brains. We'd optimistically buckled our first seat belts 11 hours previously. Whew. Cool Guy picked us up. (Naturally our luggage did not sprint from one plane to the other, but it arrived today by courier.) He had the hot tub ready, we lolled around in it, soaking our tired fannies that had spent entirely too much time confined to airline seats for entirely too many hours. Then we fell in to bed and our vacation had officially ended. So, be careful what you wish for...