Argggh. The luggage. So much luggage.
For about two days before our departure, I literally lost sleep over the logistics of luggage. We knew what we wanted to bring, but how were we supposed to carry it all? I mean...we only have to hands each, after all.
We definitely wanted to bring our
Osprey child carrier. It's great for walks, hikes and outings. It even has all that storage in the back so we didn't have to take any extra diaper bag or anything. Since we knew we were going to check it at the airport and that we lovvveeeeee it... We also decided to purchase the travel bag for it.
But as you can see from the picture above, William doesn't always LOVE the carrier, so we picked up a cheapie cheapie umbrella stroller at Walgreens.
We also needed to bring a bucket car seat for William since we were driving from Seattle to the airport (and around Seattle) with Andrew's Aunt. Hmm.... How do we get the car seat to the airport and such? We decided to attach it to a rolling carry-on bag that already came equipped with a luggage strap.
The
Baby Hawk Mei Tai wouldn't take up much space. And was ultimately required to get all the luggage AND baby to and fro from the airport.
And then of course we had to bring clothes...
In that aspect, I think I was quite reasonable.
From my research, Skagway is warmer than Juneau, and Juneau is warmer than Ketchikan. This is what June looks like historically in Juneau:
So no big jackets required... It's quite similar to hiking and living in Colorado. It's all about the layers.
I brought two long sleeve shirts. A vest. A waterproof jacket. A scarf. A pair of gloves (that never saw any action) and a winter hat. Five other shirts. Three pairs of pants. One skirt. One pair of capris. Undergarments and jammies. And my two indulgences... I packed slippers, and a vacuum sealed bath robe, which I used often at the pool. And I only packed two other pair of shoes- walking shoes and dress shoes. And of course- two semi-formal dresses and a formal dress.
(As a responsible mother, you can see I brought William's snow suit that he wore all of...hm...40 minutes...and about 3 hours later it was so warm that he was in the splash area. Alaska's weather is weird.)
With clothes, we had two more bags... a rolling duffel and a garment bag. I would have liked to have maybe had another rolling bag, but again...hands...not enough hands.
Look at all this stuff!! ARRGH! How are two people supposed to haul all this stuff AND a non-walking baby to the airport terminal?!
I made myself a packing playlist of classy/jazzy Disney songs, so packing wasn't quite as painful as it could have been. I also played it the morning of our depature:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZZphnRxM7R7biDwzhhLEkxRae-LoQuBW
We had three bags to check (garment bag, rolling duffel, and the osprey), two carry-ons (the rolling Disney bag with car seat and an osprey day pack), and three personal items (William's backpack, my disney bag, and the diaper bag)- and we bungeed the stroller to the rolling duffel (which was a solution I came up with when I should have been sleeping, because I really just don't think my husband thinks of these things).
ON TOP of all this luggage ridiculousness- I got to stress about whether or not all of this stuff and the carseat with the baby and three adults would fit in a Honda Civic that Andrew's Aunt owned. I actually tried to not worry too much about it- because what would be the worst thing that could happen?
So here is how we did it- I wore William (in the baby hawk), the osprey day pack, and carried my
Disneyland bag along with William's backpack- and pulled the small rolling carry-on. Andrew rolled the duffel and wore the osprey and the garment bag.
Onwards to the Airport!
I can't believe we did it without me losing my mind. LOL. Not to mention- that rolling duffel weighed 49.8 pounds.
Once we got to the airport, I ran inside to check and see if they had luggage carts, but they only had them downstairs for arrivals and they were $4; so we passed and lugged everything in ourselves. Although Colorado Springs is a rather tiny airport, the line to check-in was so long.
Apparently all the flights going to Seattle were overbooked- so they were offering vouchers to everyone in line- and processing them right there- so it took...sigh...a long time. Maybe she knew by the look on my face, but we were not offered a voucher.
William might be the only person (small person...but person, none the less) ever to cry because he didn't want to leave TSA. He was having so fun as I pushed him around in one of the TSA bins:
I had time to entertain him, because TSA flagged one of my bags and it was taking quite a long time... I figured if any of the bags were going to be flagged it would be by my osprey day pack, as it contained my pump, essential oil diffuser and a random bag of white powder (which was Be Calm Magnesium), but of all bags...it was my little purse. Really?
He ran it through the x-ray at least three times...I kept asking him what shape he was looking for so that maybe I could help. He didn't volunteer any information. I started pointing out the random and somewhat obscure pockets in my purse. And then it finally hit me...
...a Christmas ornament that I got on my birthday in February of the Denver Art Museum that slipped into the depths of my purse to be forgotten. We left the ornament in Seattle to be shipped with other Christmas stuff, because I simply didn't want this thing haunting me the whole trip.
Whew. It was such a relief to unload all that luggage and tuck William into his stroller. We totally got our $25 worth out of it.
Wooohooo! We finally get all boarded. Got to love family boarding.... We start taxing, so I start nursing William to prepare for the change of pressure...AND...
..the Pilot gets on the intercom and says that we are being delayed on the tarmac for 30 minutes because of a delay at SeaTec. Sigh. C'mon...C'mon. But honestly, we took it in stride. I was also a bit surprised to see that we were on a plane for 3 hours that didn't have any entertainment or wi-fi to support their entertainment app. It also had only two seats on each side of the aisle, so William and I were by ourselves on one side.
Did you know that Alaskan Air gives out free local beer and wine on their flights? Oh, yes please. And I got to enjoy both, because about 10 minutes after we took off, William fell asleep for about 2 hours. The lady sitting next to William said that we were flying masterminds. Ha. It was more like some strategic nap manipulation, luck and a bit of hope.
See that "Try-Angle" toy? It's a Discovery toy that I saw in my chiropractor's office that I knew would be great for flying. So we acquired it and didn't let William play with it until the trip. We used it all the time. We brought it to dinner almost every night. It's a bit pricey, but has 5 "different hands-on exploration areas!"
https://www.amazon.com/Discovery-Toys-1451-TRY-ANGLE-by/dp/B0055LNK1U
And by golly...we fit all that luggage into the Honda Civic.
I just want my vacation to start. But first...Seattle.
I'm not going to lie. I was moderately bummed that we had to go to Seattle before getting on the boat. It would mean another three hour drive, on top of the three hour flight we just took. But...I tried to make the best out of it. See? Here are the pictures to prove it:
(Oh Hey- Look...Proof that this baby was really still crawling by the time we boarded the boat)
But at this point, I was starting to get my Mother-in-laws cold. I'm not a very good traveler (My body just doesn't like adjusting to different altitudes and time zones) and it takes me a few days to get used to watching William ALL day again. On the first night, the downstairs toilet also clogged after I used it. Of course, it had to be me. We tried the plunger. It didn't work. We went out the next morning and bought a snake. It didn't work. Everytime we flushed the upstairs toilet- the downstairs toilet overflowed. And Andrew's Aunt insisted on moving forward with her party for 11 people that night with broken toilets.
And I have to tell you- I have a thing about toilets. I have irritable bowel disease- crohn's disease, to be exact. It's almost entirely controlled with diet. Neither of my parents have their colons anymore; they have ulcerative colitis. I unconsciously know where restrooms are around me without really being aware of it. I like working bathrooms. (On our honeymoon, The Grand Californian turned the water off in the middle of the night and I filled up the trash can with water so that I could flush the toilet if I needed to. It was totally unnecessary....but I need my potty!)
So here is something that you have never really seen in a trip report before...
Here is where some of the bathrooms live in Alaska:
For being such a tiny place, Skagway has a ton of clean public restrooms! I didn't even really use them- I was just aware of them. Perhaps it's my super magical power...Potty-detection.
The History of the Mollie Walsh Park is kind of strange:
http://www.explorenorth.com/library/weekly/aa051001a.htm
-All train cars of the White Pass have restrooms on board. The coach we had for the ride back down was equipped with a toilet. Liarsville's restroom is on the other side of the trail camp behind the "saloon."
In Juneau, we were doing excursions all day, but the whale watching boat had at least two restrooms. Orca Point had plenty of potties. And the visitor center at Mendenhall glacier had wonderful facilities. (Over a year ago, I throught to myself, "OH MY WORD. What if I'm stuck on a glacier and have to use the loo?!""- It's not like that...at least on the excursions where you aren't ON the glacier.)
We used the restroom at the Salmon Landing Market in Ketchikan. And at the Tatsuda's IGA grocery store, because we were there to pick up candy for the lovely ladies in the nursery. IGA has been a "family owned neighborhood store for four generations, since 1916" (I learned this after a local told me that it had been there "
forever.") The Totem Heritage Museum actually had really weird accordion doors in their bathrooms, but they worked just fine. Ketchikan gets oddly excited about their bathrooms-
http://www.krbd.org/2014/06/16/20236/ A couple of years ago they celebrated the opening of a public restroom with "plungers, poo cookies, and toilet-paper-for-napkins on hand."
So perhaps I'm not TOTALLY weird for being into bathrooms. Hey...our bus driver in Skagway even had a toilet joke:
See that there? That's an international bathroom. Not only is it close to the Canadian and United States Border, but when you are on your way in- your Russian, European inside the bathroom, and Finnish on your way out!
Maybe some parents with young children will appreciate knowing where the bathrooms are. Lol.
Next Up: Oh Thank Goodness...We finally can start this Disney Cruise!