Denver, Denver, Denver

When we flew to my parents, we went through Denver. We were incredibly nervous about getting stuck.

We got to the airport out here, and we checked in online beforehad to make sure we'd have boarding passes. We checked three pieces of luggage-- duffels for DH and me and Mark's carseat. They were looking for volunteers for bumps when we waited in the gate area (two roundtrips and the best seats available on the next flight-- my mom would have killed me, though). We got into Denver and holy buckets-- the moving walkways had people leaning against them the entire length of the terminal.

We got to our gate in Denver and saw that the 6:30 flight to Rapid was just leaving at 8:45. This made me worried because our flight was scheduled to leave at 9:00. Mark was fussy (not feeling well) and I didn't want to sit for over two hours with a baby up way past his bedtime. Our flight was not listed. All of a sudden, our flight was being called. We hustled to our plane and were surprised at the open seats. We sat (!) for what seemed like an hour and then took off.

We got into Rapid at roughly 11:20 pm. We got our duffels and... no carseat! After waiting in line for a half hour, we discovered that the carseat was safely in... Denver. I asked the rep what I was going to do and he first said that they had loaner carseats. But ooops! They were all gone. And gee, he had no idea what I should do. I then called the hospital for a loaner. No loaner. I called the police for a loaner. They called the airport fire department to see if they had a loaner (uh, okay...). No loaner. The police could take Mark to our hotel, but we'd probably have to wait for 60-90 minutes. So the police told me to go to the 24-hour Wal-Mart. (Happy Holidays from Rapid City.)

We finally got to the hotel at about 1:30 and the hotel desk clerk had saved up all of her venom just for us-- she leered at us as we walked in and we stated that we had already checked in. She made a snotty comment back about how she knew everyone was already checked in and I responded that we'd just arrived from Denver (i.e. back off, wench).

We got to the room and discovered that the double queen room we reserved was, a single king room with a hide-a-bed. So off DH marched to deal with venomous wenchy desk clerk (who chose to argue with him-- her mistake!) and we soon had our double queen room. Bedtime was at 2:30 am. (Local time, 4:30 am here.)

Fortunately, the trip got much better from there. We enjoyed our time in Wyoming and South Dakota, for the most part (more on my experiences in my dying hometown in a future post). Mark was appropriately spoiled by grandma. We were appropriately spoiled with free babysitting.

Fun trip. Except for Carolyn, the wickedest desk clerk in the West.