Our hosts at "Z" Bed and Breakfast served a wonderful breakfast, and we headed out for an uneventful drive back to Salt Lake City. Because of the events that had happened on Tuesday, we were very concerned about being able to get home, as we had been getting reports that air travel was still disrupted and delays were still the norm.
We turned in our trusty rental car and headed back to the hotel to get ready for an early wake-up. Our flight was scheduled for 6AM, but we wanted to get to the airport very early, just in case.
Our 3 O'clock wakeup call came WAY too early. We called the airline and our flights were still looking good. We arrived at the airport at 3:45 and headed straight for the ticket counter. There was a moderate line in front of us, but no ticket agents to be found. Some people looked like they had camped out in line. The first ticket agent appeared at 4:30 or so, and was frantically trying to get people and their luggage processed through. By the time he arrived, the line behind us had filled in the kiosk area and was trailing several hundred feet back into the terminal area. Other ticket agents arrived about 5:00, but by that time the end of the line was completely out of sight (we are SO glad we arrived early!).
Our flight to Atlanta took off about on time. When we arrived at Atlanta, all of the planes that were grounded and delayed were taking up all of the gates, so we ended up sitting on the tarmac for about an hour waiting for a gate so we could get off the plane. When we finally got off the plane (at Gate A1) our flight was scheduled to leave in less than 15 minutes (at gate C27 - the exact opposite side of the airport!). We took off across the airport at a near-run, and made it with minutes to spare, only to find out that our flight to Manchester was delayed. Fortunately, however, the flight took off about 20 minutes late with little runway delay, and we were home within 1/2 hour of our scheduled arrival.
We had a great time on our trip, and spent Sunday recovering and unpacking (and getting up-to-speed with world events that occurred while we were away).
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