We’re off on another adventure! This time we’re headed to Australia with stops in San Diego and Honolulu. We wanted to break up the trip since neither of us is up for 24 hours straight through in an airplane. We’ve done that before and we won’t do it again. So come along with us on this next adventure.
We’re very happy that Delta continues to provide service to the Binghamton airport, but we sure do hate the 5:45 a.m. departure time! Up at 3:30 and looking out to see snow falling. We had been carefully tracking the weather forecast, both in Binghamton and in Detroit (where we were to connect to our flight to San Diego), so we did expect to see snow the morning of our departure. Made it kind of nerve-wracking to not know if we would get airborne this morning. The drive to the airport was a little dicey, with about 2 inches of new snow, so the roads were slushy and slippery. But they know what they’re doing at the Binghamton airport and the plows had been out clearing the runway. We were anxious about this first leg because our connection time in Detroit was about 40 minutes. So, when we rolled back from the jet-way on time, I was relieved. However, the deicing and waiting to take off took about 40 minutes. Yikes!
Off we went eventually without further incident. We landed in Detroit with 20 minutes to make our connection. We had to run from the C terminal to the A terminal. And of course, the arrival gate was at the end of terminal C and the departure gate was at the end of terminal A, a long way to run, but run we did and managed to get to the gate as the final boarding call had been made. Whew! We also prepared ourselves that our luggage could never make it on to the plane.
Off to San Diego we flew. One of my favorite things about flying is looking out the window and seeing all the wonderful patterns of the landscape on the ground. We had fairly clear skies and so I could take in a lot of various patterns. I’m really fascinated by it all. And I snap a lot of photos, that mostly don’t turn out too well through the scratchy, dirty plane windows. But here are a few shots.
Nearing Detroit 
Farmland 
Interesting patterns 
Snowy river pathways 
All those little white circular areas along the ridges are fracking wells 
Lake Mead 
Lake Mead
We arrived in San Diego at about 10:30 a.m. west coast time. We were totally surprised to see our suitcases come around the conveyor belt on the luggage carousel. Yeah Delta! We called the Hampton to ask for the shuttle and arrived at the hotel too early for a room to be ready. As it was well past our east coast lunch time, we were starving so we walked across a pedestrian bridge over a boat canal to a newly developed area referred to as Liberty Station located around the former Naval Training Center to look for a place to eat. We went to a place called Oggi’s and had a nice lunch. One of the reasons we chose to layover in San Diego is to meet up with friends Karen and Linda. Karen came to the restaurant and we spent some time catching up. After lunch, Christine and I went back the Hampton, got checked in and took a nap. Karen and Linda picked us up and took us on a tour of parts of San Diego.
It was just dusk as we left the hotel so we had just enough time to get to the beach to see the last of the sunset. It was beautiful and Venus was shining brightly.
San Diego sunset 
Sunset with Venus in the night sky 
San Diego sunset 
Jet contrails near moon
We then toured around some more, taking in the lovely vistas of the nighttime waterfront with all the sparkling lights. We eventually made our way back to the Liberty Station area and had dinner at a Thai restaurant. It was great being with Karen and Linda for the evening. Karen was such an important part of Christine’s business life and her involvement with Association of Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) and we’ve formed a lifelong bond with the two of them.
We returned to our hotel and did a little prep for our morning departure to Honolulu. And then, we collapsed into bed after a very long day.