Christmas morning was relaxing as we all slept in a got up around 9:30am. I still had a few more things to pack into my suitcase for my trip to Salt Lake City. I left the house at around 1pm to attend our Christmas luncheon at my brothers' in-laws.
About 1:45 pm I received a blackberry message from one of my friends in Utah, who told me they had blizzard conditions and no power. I thought, I have to get out, so hopefully everything will be cleared up by the time I'm to arrive in Utah. I check my flight status and everything was on time.
We had a delicious dinner of prime rib, BBQ ribs, squash casserole, homemade roles and sweet potatoes. After a couple of hours my brother and sister-in-law took me to the airport and I checked in with ease.
We loaded the plane and took off early to Minnesota. When we arrived I had to book it from one terminal to another, which also involved getting on a tram. I quickly arrived at the gate only to find out that we were delayed. We continued to wait for almost an hour and then we loaded the plane and headed for Utah. When we were approaching Salt Lake the captain continued to warn us of freezing fog, low visibility and keeping our seat belts securely fastened. I always sit in the window seat and as we were about to touchdown, I realized that the white below was the actual runway. We touched down and fortunately didn't slide off the runway.
As we approached, the tarmac was filled with hundreds of planes and our gate had to be reassigned, but there was one catch. The gate we were transferred to was not made for our type of aircraft. So they had to move quite a bit of heavy machinery, which ended up taking over an hour. We were literally 10 feet away from the gate, but we started to slide, so we had to wait for someone to tow us in. Back and forth and back and forth several more times until we finally made it into the gate. Cheers and applause could be heard throughout the cabin.
We deplaned and it was 2am. Several stranded passengers were scattered throughout the airport sleeping or playing on their computers. We ended up deplaning in Terminal 2, but our luggage was sent to Terminal 1. We were directed to carousal 4 where we waited for another 1 1/2 hours, until the luggage started to spit out on to the carousal.
After retrieving my luggage, I hopped on the bus to the economy parking lot. When I arrived at my brother and sister-in-law's car, there was tons of snow on the car and it was up to my calves. It only took about 20 minutes to clear off. I said a quick prayer and started my journey to my friends house.
None of the roads had been plowed and it was quite slippery. I fortunately made it to my friend's home in safety at 4:20 am.
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