Day Fifteen

We started the day in Boulder at a theoretically very nice hotel (read: very expensive), which turned out to be just very expensive.  We took a quick trip to the NCAR Mesa Lab (which I refer to as Mount Olympus), where the kids finally got to see a tornado (albeit made of steam), then got back in the vans for one last time for the trip back to the airport.  We took the traditional route (US36 to 104^th Avenue to Tower to Peña Boulevard), which got us to the rental place about 10 minutes late but no worries.  Final tally: 5318 miles.

We had a while to wait, so we had a quiet lunch and headed into security, where the TSA agent was impressed with my The Whos t-shirt (yet another person who gets it, yay).  We were scheduled to fly out at 5:18 pm local, and made it out with no problems. 

Atlanta was another story, however.  They were under a severe thunderstorm watch (oh good).  We were scheduled to land at a bit past 10 pm local, and our flight to Rochester was scheduled to leave at 11 pm local.  We were forced to land in Memphis, where we spent about 45 minutes.  We got back onto the plane and flew to Atlanta hoping for a break in the weather.  Plenty of lightning from the plane.  A bow echo (another one!) rolled through the airport, delaying our landing.  When we did land, we were directed to get in line at a gate agent, not a good sign.  It would appear that we missed our connecting flight by about 15 minutes.  They also got off with 15 empty seats. 

Due to the high number in our party (15), we were rebooked on the exact same flight (11 pm) Thursday.  This led to much consternation, as you might imagine.  We trolled for hotel rooms, but as you might imagine there were none in the vicinity of the airport.  We were eventually able to find a place in Fayetteville (15 miles south of the airport).  Being in Terminal D meant that we had to walk about a mile (no airport train running) to get to the taxi line.  (I hate this airport.)  $45 later, we arrived at the hotel at 4:40 am, where I went to yet another hotel room and passed out.