Next up, we headed to Alaska! This trip was a lifelong dream of Bill's dad, Jim, and we were excited to experience Alaska with him and Bill's sister, Mary. Major props to Mary for organizing so much of this trip! 👏👏👏
Our travel day happened to fall on Zadie's 6th birthday! We'd celebrated with family over the weekend so she wasn't feeling super "birthday girl" this day. Or maybe she was just tired - my cheap flights had us waking up at 2:45 a.m. for an early departure. We ended up scrambling when several ride share attempts fell through, eventually driving ourselves to the airport. Apparently not many drivers on the road that early (/late?) on a Monday morning!
We landed in Dallas just after 7:00 a.m. and then had about 9 hours to kill before our next flight. Bill and the girls had never been to Texas, so we spent the day in downtown Dallas. The DART train took us directly from the airport to downtown Dallas, very convenient. We had lots o' coffee and breakfast (including plate-sized pancakes, yum) at Cindi's NY Deli, then visited Dealey Plaza to see where JFK was shot. Many of the museums and attractions are closed Mondays (Sixth Floor Museum open but not ideal for Zadie), so we'd planned to just walk around downtown, visit some parks, and get a sense of the place. Zadie's favorite was the splash pad. She promised that she wouldn't get too wet, but here's how that turned out:
Fortunately we had plenty of time so she could dry off! After a few more parks, memorials, and sculpture gardens, it started getting a little too hot to walk around (90s), so we caught the train back to the airport.
We got some lunch at the airport but didn't eat a ton figuring we'd get dinner on our flight. Seven hour flight leaving at 4:30 p.m. - that seemed like a safe assumption to me, but I was wrong. They gave us only a packet of pretzels and cookies; we were very glad for our pre-packed snacks.
We landed in a rainy Anchorage that night and got a ride over to our comfy AirBnB apartment where we met up with Mary and Jim. All in all, a good travel day with no major problems, and we were ready to rest up and start our Alaskan adventure.