Days 13 and 14: The Rest of the Journey Home

Today we said our toodle-oo's to Angi, and flew from Hawaii to Las Vegas. Some slept on the plane ride, most did not. We landed in Vegas quite late (think midnight-thirty), and caught a couple Ubers to our hotel (the shuttle didn't run that late, which we all thought was odd, seeing as it's a city that never sleeps).

We slept for a couple hours and back to the airport we went for the last flight.  It was SUPER busy (and it was 4 am!). We checked in at the kiosk, but one of the luggage tickets didn't print off, so we had to go stand in the LOOOOONG line to get that checked into. Once we got up to the service desk, they couldn't find which ticket it was, so they had to write down all the baggage tickets by hand, and then guess at which ticket number it was (they had already put one of our bags on the conveyer belt and couldn't cross reference it).  They "made a guess" and printed the ticket out. We said a prayer that no luggage would get lost in transit haha

Security was busy as well, and that took forever.  Our luggage had NO problems through the whole trip...until we got to Las Vegas. Apparently we looked sketchy and so did our luggage.  Also, everyone else brought neck pillows, I brought a "butt pillow".  That was sketchy as well. We were scrutinized and finally deemed worthy to pass, so we grabbed everything and made a mad dash to our gate, and made it just in time.  Yes, it took 2 hours to get through all that! The flight from Vegas to Salt Lake was about an hour, but we still had some nappers...

Once we landed, we just sat there in our seats with a bit of a dazed look, more than a little grateful we didn't have to fly anymore...but we still had to drive LOL My sister picked us up and took us to our waiting vehicles and we all said our see-ya-laters to Grandma and my sister and her family.  We drove up and visited Chris's family for a bit, before making the drive up to Terra's apartment and saying TTFN to her.  Guys, we were so tired we didn't any pictures of those places we stopped. We could barely keep our eyes open while we were visiting any of them!

We made it to my mom's house to gather up the stuff we left behind and stayed the night there. We were so exhausted, our normally early risers didn't even get out of bed until after 10 am, and those that tried, fell asleep on the couch LOL

We packed up our gear and headed out just after noon.  We are home! We've been welcomed by all our cousin-friends and sibling-friends, as well as our furbabies! We were missed, and everyone is content regaling everyone with stories of what we missed while we were gone, our adventures, showing off the trinkets and handing out the goodies we brought back. It's good to be home, although, we miss Australia so very much already.  I'm not sure I could convince anyone to get back in a plane again right now.  Maybe next week HAHA!

Day 12...or is it still 11?...and Pearl Harbor

 We are sitting in Hawaii, waiting for our flight to the mainland, so I'm catching up on my posts that I couldn't do because of the afore mentioned chaos in the previous posts.

We had an uneventful flight and most of the crew slept on the flight. For them it feels like "tomorrow". For those of us that weren't lucky enough to catch a snooze, it still feels like today.  Let's couple that with crossing the international date line and we're all sorts of messed up at the moment haha

The last glimpses of Australia as we were taking off.

Sunrise in Hawaii as we landed.

We made it through customs in tact, so WOOHOO, we didn't do anything against the rules...I think. I hope. Moving along... We rented a luggage locker, since our layover was so long here, and decided to hop on over to Pearl Harbor to pay our respects as well as look around. It truly is a sacred ground and very peaceful there. We didn't think we'd have time to go out to the USS Arizona, however, the standby line was nearly empty right when we showed up, so guess who got to go out there first thing?! We did! Talk about humbling. It brought a few tears to our eyes as we listened to the guide discuss the wall of names and the addition of the stone for the "survivor names" (the ones that survived the attacks and chose to have their ashes buried there after they passed on). It was so touching, and quite eye opening to see the wall full of names.  You hear the numbers and think "yeah, that's a lot" but having a visual right in front of you is breathtaking.

We ate a quick lunch there, and headed back to the airport, after going through the museum (WWII and Cold War) and touring the submarine. We have decided it is a good thing we don't live on a submarine. We're either too giagantic to fit through the doors (imagine James and Tyler trying to fit through a kid's play place door that's built for a toddler), or we're too claustrophobic LOL (no pictures from inside the sub, sorry).

After getting our luggage from the locker area (our luggage took up half their room LOL), we got checked in and through security again. We had a couple hiccups in security this time, however, notes have been taken and the next flight will be less eventful in checking in, we hope haha

We have a little bit of downtime, so we thought we'd break out some more foreign things to try. It's better than I thought it would be, but I was done after one piece LOL The crocodile jerky reminds me of turkey jerky (Chris compared it to that and I must agree with him on that one), and I'm just deciding that I'm not really a fan of kangaroo meat. Chris said it tasted too much like BBQ for him to get any flavors coming through, but I disagree. It's not bad, but I'm not going to jump at buying it if I see it in a market somewhere. *shrugs*

Day 11 - Packing and "See Ya Laters"

 We slept in today. Last night, you'll remember, we went to the penguin parade.  That doesn't start until around dusk, and since it takes 2 hours to get there, it was super late getting back home.  We all needed that sleep, for sure! However, that just means we had to scramble all the faster to get bags packed, weighed, repacked, reweigh, rinse and repeat until we got it just right.

We finally got everything "just right" and loaded up to head to the airport, lamenting the whole way that this trip FLEW by so fast! There were many emotions this morning that we needed to help each other work through. This trip of a lifetime is over too fast, but I wanna go home, but I don't, I'm not ready to sit in a plane for 18+ hours (even if it IS broken up between a few flights), I'm fighting off a cold I caught and just don't want to move (but all I want is my own bed at the same time).  These feelings are BIG, you guys. They're valid and need to be felt. So that's what we did.  In between all the packing and scrambling, we hugged and cried and laughed through it all.

We got to the airport and unloaded, saying our last "see ya's" to our Aussie family, and we were off in to the airport - only have have more tears that couldn't be held back any longer. Saying good bye of any kind is rough stuff.

We got all checked in, boarding passes printed, baggage off to the loaded and lunch was enjoyed. After we cleaned up from lunch, we discovered that a boarding pass was missing. Frantic looking, backtracking, and finally approaching the desk to request a reprint happened. They were very kind about the whole thing.  All I could think was "if we made it this far without having any mishaps until this moment, we're doing FANTASTIC!