Day 1 continued/flight to Minneapolis

In case you, like me before last week, have never been on a commercial airline, this is what they look like on the inside. There is VERY little room between the seats and the seats are VERY close together. Above the seats there is a small amount of room for your carry-on bags. You also have space underneath your seat for small items, but our big suitcase had to be checked. This means that I had to pay $23 to have it be handled by the airline's people with the hopes that it would end up in Atlanta. Just in case you're wondering: Yes, it did arrive just fine!


This pretty lady was my very first stewardess. This isn't a very good picture of her, as she was very pleasant and had a gorgeous smile--not like a couple of grumps that we got later on during our journey. She made sure that everyone found their way to their seats and had their possessions in the right location above or beneat the seats. Then she closed the storage compartments above the seats to prepare for the flight and ran through the safety precautions of what to do if there should happen to be a crash. YIPES!

This is how I looked before the plane left the ground. I was so excited for Jacob to be getting his dream-come-true trip that I was sure that everything would work out fine. I took this myself so it looks kind of goofy. I would have preferred Jacob to take it, but he was off on Cloud Nine!

Once again I need to mention that my camera wasn't working very well because some how or other the flash got turned off. Most of the pictures that I took on the first day had to be deleted because when we were moving they were totally fuzzed. I couldn't stand deleting ALL of them, though, so you'll just need to put up with the blurr.

Anyway the point that I was making here is that, as the flight progressed, my smile disappeared. I have been told many times since then, as I related the story of this flight, that other travelers have never once been on a flight when almost a dozen people lost their breakfasts. There was a LOT of turbulence!!! I am fully convinced that, had I not brought along the bottle of water with the few drops of lemon essential oil, I WOULD HAVE JOINED THEM! I cannot recommend too much getting in the habit of taking along lemon essential oil on any trip that you may take as it has many useful purposes of which I will relate as we go along.

Suffice it to say, I did NOT look out the window at the pretty clouds as Jacob so frequently requested me to do. I sat quietly, sipping my water, and kept doing cortices whenever my stomach got REALLY upset. At one point I thought, "OH MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO?" I even told myself that I'd have to rent a car in the Cities and drive myself home as I simply could NOT imagine myself EVER going on another airplane in my entire life.

More than one person told me since then that I can rejoice because now I have had the very worst flight of my life and that dreaded event is already behind me! From the perspective now of having had 4 whole flights on our trip, THAT so far is indeed the case. In fact, on the way home from Minneapolis I asked Jacob to let me have the window seat for a few moments so that I could take some pictures of the beautiful cloud formations. Those pictures, though, will have to wait about a week to show up here.

Jacob is one cool cucumber. His enthusiasm carried me through the whole trip! One time on this flight, though, I was a little worried about him when he closed his shade and turned towards me for a swallow of my lemon water. It didn't take him long, though, and he was back to cloud gazing--from the top down. This whole thing was a dream come true for my 14 year old son!

FINALLY we felt the wheels of our plane touch ground about an hour and a half later. This is a picture of the part of the Minneapolis airport where we landed. As you can see, there was a light mist on the windows which didn't exactly match with the sunny forecast for the Minneapolis area that they were displaying in the Bismarck airport.

Once we were on the ground, I suddenly felt MUCH better. Things began happening as soon as the planed was parked in the right spot. We were encouraged to pick up all of our things and leave the plane as quickly as possible. We had a little over an hour to get to our next plane and I was VERY nervous about finding the way, but that is the subject of my next post.

Did I say that the pilot greeted us from the cockpit as we left the plane? This was truly exciting for Jacob as he STILL has dreams of being a pilot someday.

More later,

Dawn

PS. Today was a lovely, quiet family day at home which I soaked up in preparation for another wildly, busy week of alfalfa and wheat harvest; BT sessions; canning garden produce; and apples, apples, apples...............