No vacation is
snag-free, but our first snag occurred 5 hours into the trip.
The first leg, from Philadelphia to Salt Lake City was uneventful.
The flight from Salt Lake City to Anchorage, however, was horrifically
overbooked. They were offering $1000 in air travel for people
to give up their seats. Nobody was taking the offer. We were
sure we were gonna get screwed and end up spending a night by
the Great Salt Lake. We didn't. But our seats were not quite
side-by-side. We were sixteen rows apart. We didn't see each
other for five hours, until we landed in Anchorage
The Anchorage airport was practically deserted. It had a very industrial, self-service atmosphere. Ours was one of 4 planes in the airport.
The flight to Fairbanks was not quite full, and we managed to sit together for the final leg of the fourteen hour journey.
Fairbanks is rather ordinary as American cities go. Certain locales have their own specific charm, like New Orleans or Charleston or Seattle or Phoenix. Fairbanks reminded me of ... New Jersey. I guess I expected something more frontierish of a town 180 miles from the Arctic Circle.
Princess Cruises does an amazing job of coordinating 46 different tours with the sailings of four ships. So when you deviate, they get flustered. We arrived two days early, rented a car and drove ourselves and our luggage to the hotel (instead of using their shuttle bus). We let the cruise rep at the airport know we were here, but when we arrived at the hotel, before the bus and with our luggage, the hotel rep didn't know what to do. We got that sorted out, and we had a great dinner at the hotel. We were back in our room at 7:30 (11:30 jet lag time). We called to confirm our tour to the Arctic Circle the next day. The guy asked us to call back in an hour (12:30, jet lag time). We did. He said he'd call us right back. An hour later (1:30 am JLT) we were informed that the trip was cancelled. He gave us the number of another tour company. We called, and managed to get space for the next day, deparure at 6:30 am. Bring a lunch.
We were sleeping soundly by 9:45.