FLYING TO CHICAGO 1ST DAY OF OUR TRIP

September 1, 2018

My mom has always wanted to go on the Church History Tour to Palmyra and down to Nauvoo. We decided to plan the trip. We found that the FUN FOR LESS TOUR was the best tour to see everything we wanted to see. This tour started in Pennsylvania at Susquehanna, where the new Priesthood Site is and where Joseph Smith got baptized.

I figured since we were flying to Philadelphia, wouldn't it be fun if we went a few days early so we could go see all of Philly plus we could go to Gettysburg, Hershey Factory and Valley Forge. So I made all of the plans and arrangements and we would meet our tour the night before at the hotel and take off with them the next day. Here's what happened:

We were so excited to fly out on Sept 1st to HARRISBURG, PA. We had a layover in CHICAGO. Well, it had been raining hard in CHICAGO and our flight kept being DELAYED! Oh man! We ended up missing our connecting flight and then it got ugly!

The next flight out was the next morning at 6:30 am, so we had to find a hotel in Chicago for the night. So we did. But...our hotel in Harrisburg was threatening that we would lose our reservation there for 2 days over the holiday weekend if we did not check in...isn't that crazy? We said we would even pay for the night we weren't sleeping there. After 1 hour on the phone with them in the airport, we FINALLY got our room for the next day. The same thing happened at the Car Rental place. If I didn't pick up our rental car that day, we wouldn't have one available the next day. It was nuts!
To say I was FRUSTRATED was an understatement. So Joyce got on her phone and tried to rent a car for us the next day and they didn't have anything available big enough for 5 people with luggage....long story short...the next day everything was able to work out and they were going to charge us $750 for 3 days instead of $425 for 4 days. After realizing how stupid that was, they finally made it work that we paid the $425...geesh! Not a great start to this wonderful vacation!

So...we spent the night in CHICAGO and we didn't have our bags so we had no clothes, make up or toothbrushes so we bought toothbrushes and toothpaste at the airport and we went to our hotel. It was dark and rainy and we were tired after this long frustrating day so we just went to our room and watched tv! Ha! Ha!

 Here we are at the airport excited to go on our trip! We exchanged gifts again on this trip in the airport. Joyce and Jenny gave us a cute charm bracelet, Sees Chocolates (that's tradition!) and a fan that hooks on to our cell phones...it's going to be extremely humid and hot where we are going. Deb gave us a small pooh-pouri, ear plugs, trivia book and a water filled, battery run fan that hooks on our purse...see it's going to be hot and boy did we use them! Me and mom gave them a waterproof case to hold their cell phones so they could take pics and videos at Niagra Falls without ruining them. We also gave them waterproof fanny packs so we could keep our passports and money in them so they don't get wet. We used those too and it was so great being hands free!

 Me and my sister are still smiling in the airport...

 Now we are wondering if we are ever going to get on our plane!

 We finally made it on the plane...still happy because we don't know we are going to miss our connecting flight!

 Love this view from the plane of Chicago

 OK...now I know I'm stuck in the airport, we are missing going to Hershey and the huge ordeal with the hotel, rental car and our mean guy at the airport getting us on the earliest flight out. I gave this O'Hare airport a thumbs down and in the pic below I may or may not be flipping off United Airlines!