Flight to Ontario

Thursday, Sept 20

Pretty Early to Get Up!!

We were up pretty early yesterday to get to the plane.  Lloyd picked us up at about 5:20am, and we were at the airport at about 6:00.  After we checked our bags (we brought one more than we were allowed so had to pay for the extra), we waited until Karen brought mom and dad.

Once we got their bags checked in, we went through security and waited until it was time to load the plane.  At about 6:30am, they called us to load, and we were ready to go.  The flight to Calgary was about an hour, and went very smoothly.

Landing in Calgary

Once in Calgary, we had a 4 hour wait, and spent part of the time having breakfast.  Then it was a long wait.  Dawn and I walked around the part of the airport where we were allowed to go.  It is a lot bigger than Kamloops, but once you have seen one of the shops, you've pretty much seen all of them.  We were pretty tired of waiting, by the time they called our flight to London.  Flying is great, but the waiting is a pain.

West Jet 737 Beside us as we Left

The flight was scheduled for 3 hours 10 minutes, and we thought that was prOveretty good to go that far in that short of time.  The plane went up to almost 40 000 feet at about 500 miles per hour and until we got closer to Ontario, the sky was pretty clear.  The route we followed took us through the north-eastern tip of Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin, over Green Bay, Michigan and Lake Michigan, and then to London, Ontario.  It was mostly cloudy by the time we got to Michigan, so we couldn't see much of the water.  However, just before we got into London, the clouds broke, and we could see the shore of Lake Huron as we were coming down in elevation.  It was dusk by that time, and by the time we got landed and into the airport, it was dark (7:30 in Ontario, but 4:30 in BC).  Getting the bags and finding the car we had rented went pretty well, and we left the airport at about 8:00pm.

Over London, ON

I set up the GPS, punched in Shirley's address in Chatham, and off we went.  We stopped at a truck stop dad knew about, and had something to eat, so lost about 45 minutes.  The car took some time to get used to.  It is a brand new Taurus, and seems to have lots of features.  It was a button start, so that is something I will have to get used to.  The dash is great, but most of the indicators for sound, temperature, etc., are on a screen.  Finding the buttons that work things will take some time, and are best not attempted while driving on strange highways at night.  I did manage to figure out the cruise control, but couldn't figure out the temperature controls for the air conditioner.

We arrived at Shirley's at about 10.  Old GPS Jill took us directly there with no trouble.  I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to find it without her.  Dad knew the way and would have been able to direct us, but we were able to rely on Jill to get us there.

Shirley was still up when we got in, so met us at the door.  We went in and visited for about an hour before Dawn and I decided we needed to go to bed.  We don't know why we were feeling so tired, because it was only about 8:30 BC time, but tired we were.  Shirley had a double bed for us to sleep in, and it didn't take long to fall asleep.