The Trip

Since I'm sure the entire world is waiting in eager anticipation to hear about my trip, here goes... I may break it up into a couple days, since this could get long.

Things started out well. We got to the airport in Kansas City with plenty of time to spare, got checked in, ate breakfast, and life was good.

Then... just as we were thinking we should be boarding the plane really soon, the friendly gate agent tells us that the flight will be delayed... because there was smoke in the lavatory of said plane and the smoke alarms were going off. But, no worries, maintenance is on the way and they'll have things taken care of in no time.

Right.

At 9:37, when our flight was supposed to be departing, maintenance had not only not taken care of the problem, they hadn't even shown up.

The flight got pushed back to 10. Then 10:30. Then 11:00. We were supposed to have a long layover in Atlanta, so we weren't too worried. As long as we left Kansas City by noon, we thought we'd be able to make the connecting flight just fine.

At 11:30, they cancelled the flight. There were 4 other flights leaving Kansas City for Atlanta the rest of that day. We got on the second one out... at 3:30. We were actually supposed to be landing in Virginia at 4:45 (which would be 3:45 in Kansas), so we wouldn't even be leaving Kansas until 15 minutes before we were supposed to be arriving in Virginia. *sigh*

We finally got to Virginia at 11:30 that night. Our bags had, thankfully, followed us safely, we got our rental car, and set out to find our hotel. We landed in Newport News and our hotel was in Williamsburg, about 20 miles away.

Lesson number one: The roads in Virginia are not like the roads in Kansas. In Kansas, the roads are pretty straight forward (I know, I know, we have plenty of flat space for them to be straight). Most roads are laid out in a grid and it's pretty simple to find your way around. In Virginia? Not so much. They turn and twist every which way, and sometimes in order to go one way, you've got to turn the exact opposite way to get there.

We'd gotten directions to the hotel, so we weren't too worried. Unfortunately, the road signs we kept seeing that were pointing to the roads we thought we were supposed to be taking... well, they tended to be pointing different ways than our directions told us to go. Keep in mind that all this was happening around midnight, so it was really, really dark and neither of us had ever been there before. We followed the directions, thinking we'd probably end up in North Carolina or something, but amazingly enough, eventually made it to the hotel.

Lesson number two: We were staying at Travelodge. There are THREE Travelodges within just a few miles of each other in Williamsburg. Our directions... yeah, they weren't for the one we were staying at. The very friendly woman at the desk figured out which one we were supposed to be staying at and gave us directions there. Thankfully, we found it pretty easily.

We spent Saturday and Sunday at Busch Gardens. It. Was. Awesome. I like roller coasters. They have lots and lots of roller coaster, including the Griffon, which I have to say was the best roller coaster I have ever been on in my life... I think we rode it 4 times both days we were there.

There is no floor below you. They take you 205 feet in the air. You go over the lip of the hill and stop... hang there for 5 seconds.... looking straight down. And then they drop you. I've been on roller coasters before that seemed to have a pretty steep drop... but this was actually straight down. Ah... just thinking about it gives me happy shivers... The weather was perfect both days. The crowds were pretty light - I don't think we had to wait for than 15 minutes for anything. It was great.

Ummm... I think I'll stop for now, since this is already kinda long... Tune in next time...