Day 1: Houston to Anchorage- now with ranch!

  Houston, Texas, United States
Friday, September 5, 2008

Since we didn't have to get to the airport until 3:00, the day started relaxed, but quickly spiraled into a flurry of house cleaning, errands, and last minute packing. Everything was taken care of, and soon enough we were on our way to the airport. We got there early, so we had plenty of time to pass. Luckily, the airport is one of the best people watching places ever. After several passed by, we decided to start counting how many fanny packs we saw over the course of the trip. Houston fanny pack count: 2. Across from our gate there was a Bass Pro Shop store. It basically meets all of your outdoors and animal killing needs (in the airport?). I had never seen a store in an airport with more dead, stuffed animals inside it. Raccoons, ducks, and a big, dead, stuffed bear in the front window. Gotta love Texas. Mental note on the bear....

The plane fight to Anchorage was not non-stop and we had to fly to Seattle before getting to our final destination. Your normal flight.....and then came dinner. Or what they passed off as dinner. Turns out pizza was on the menu, but not just any pizza- a philly cheese steak pizza. But to make it more exciting (and more desirable?) the package proudly exclaimed that it was now made with ranch! Oh God?! Ranch dressing baked into the pizza? It that really necessary? The horrifying nutritional information on the back attested to the power of baked in ranch: it contained enough cholesterol fulfill 10% of your daily allowance. I've never seen anything that even had cholesterol as a player in the nutrition facts, let alone 10% of your allowed intake! In one 4 inch pizza! As scary as the nutritional info was, the list of processed ingredients that came together to form the pizza like object was staggering. Surprisingly, ranch was not listed as one of the ingredients. As horrified as I was, I was hungry so I scraped off the mound of philly cheese-like material (never saw any ranch) and ate the rubbery crust solo. Yum.

Mt. Rainier from the plane

Flying into Seattle was a treat; we flew right past Mt. Rainier and got a great view of the peak during sunset. Luckily we got an hour layover in Seattle so we had enough time to jump off the plane, grab a bite to eat (no ranch involved) and get back on the plane. It was fun to compare the Seattle airport to Houston- bins for recycling, Starbucks every 50 feet, and hip food offerings. No dead stuffed animals.

The flight from Houston to Anchorage was only about 3 hours but it felt like an eternity. Directly behind us sat 2 good 'ol boys on their way to Alaska to go hunting. They both wore their hunting camo on the plane, and one guy was even sporting his snakeboots and hunting hat. How did I know they were going hunting? Let's just say an incessant avalanche of words poured from the row behind us, assailing our brains with non-stop conversation. Keep in mind that is is now about midnight Texas time, and the whole plane is asleep, except for these two jacknuts. And they aren't using their inside voices. Here are some nuggets from their conversation:
"How far would the wind blow a bullet off course if it was blowing 30 miles per hour?"
"My granny is 96 years old..."
"That's what bear scat looks like."
Oh God. If I had a dollar every time they mentioned bear scat. Luckily I had on noise canceling headphones, but unfortunately they were not redneck canceling headphones. I had to turn the music up pretty loud to drown out the constant barrage of words. We eventually landed and made out way into the Anchorage airport.

The Anchorage airport. Wow. What can I say. Within minutes of walking out of the jet-way, I was greeted with the most motley assortment of people I have ever seen waiting for a plane. And the airport itself! It looked like it hadn't been renovated since 1974 and the food court had been salvaged from an old bowling alley. Not to mention the world record Halibut hanging on the wall. Hmmmm, is that a dead, stuffed bear too? We finally made it to our hotel at 12:30am Alaska time (3:30am Texas time.) It felt so good to lay down.