small detour

Minus our little detour on our way to Wyoming, our week long vacation to Star Valley could not have been better. We always love when we are able to get out and visit family. Our original plan was to be in SV for Christmas, but after looking at plane tickets, we decided to forgo that option. One night at home, Colby was playing around on priceline. He looked at me with a scared face and exclaimed, "I just bought plane tickets to Wyoming." He had put in his info, thinking it impossible to actually be granted tickets, but we got them--great deal too!


Our flight there left from northwest arkansas regional airport, only 10 minutes from our house. We flew through Chicago with our final destination being Jackson Hole, wy. We arrived to Jackson 30 minutes early and were so excited, until the pilot suddendly pulled the plane back up after nearly landing. There was a snow storm and due to the large size of our plane we could not land until the runway had been cleared off more. Small planes were landing, but not us. We circled over Yellowstone for 2.5 hours (couldn't see anything except clouds though) before being redirected to SLC. Bummer. Because the conditions in Jackson were not improving the airline decided to send the plane back to Chicago (several hours later) because they needed the aircraft the next day. Passengers were told they could fly to Chicago then try to get on the Jackson flight the next day. Wow. Because it was weather related, the airline was not reimbursing any additional travel expenses. If we flew to Chicago, we would need a hotel and were not sure if we could even land in Jackson the following day. We felt bad for all the other passengers who were going to Jackson for skiing and had to lose out on hotel room reservations and ski lift passes they had already purchased. A man across the aisle from us actually ripped the armrest out of his chair because he was so mad. Lucky for us, we had no "real plans" and our vacation could be put on hold. We stayed in SLC with Aunt Malee that night, and rented a car to drive up to Idaho Falls the next day where we would meet the Heiners and go with them to Star Valley. The good side of all of this is we got to see Malee and I got to stop in real quick at Nordstrom!!

Needless to say, we were grateful to finally reach our final destination in Star Valley, 27 hours late.

Black piece is the armrest from the seat in front of it.