Dec 26- Home? No, St. Louis!!!!!!

After repacking 12 bags with Christmas presents, snow gear, gloves, boots, and snacks for the plane, we get to the Idaho Falls airport. They say that our plane to Denver is again delayed, but it doesn't matter, because in Denver there is a flight later to Madison, so we should be covered no matter what.

We have a pleasant flight to Denver, and get there a half hour after our flight to Madison should have left. We figure we have missed it... but an airport lady looks at our tickets and starts shouting "Run, Run, Run!" As she frantically waves her arms. Running is not too easy when you are an army of 6, carrying bags and a car-seat.

We drop into seats on the plane, and think we are very lucky to be on that plane, instead of the later flight. We will be home early that evening. Here is Sylvia in the plane... before we realized that things were not going to turn out as planned....

The Midwest had a freak warming streak that caused major fog when the warm air sat on top of all the snow they had. This fogged in Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago airports as well as others for miles around. We circled and waited for it to clear, until running out of fuel became an issue. The plane couldn't land at it's back-up airport in Ohio because it was fogged in as well. They finally landed in St. Louis, Missouri.

The problem was that the airport was flooded with other stranded flights. We couldn't taxi in to a gate to unload. Apparently it was illeagal to get off out on the runway. They didn't have any staff in the airport to help with re-booking. They didn't have a fuel contract with the people at the airport.

The baffled pilot spent hours trying to sort the mess out. The corporate head-quarters tried to convince somebody to fuel our plane, but nobody would because they weren't sure who would pay the gas bill. It was on the verge of ridiculous. The piolot said they couldn't take on supplies (like water) because they didn't have a contract with any suppliers there. When the stewardess broke out an emergency box of granola bars, and started rationing out a bottle of water... I started worrying about how stable the kids would be with limited liquids and food. Sean was getting a migraine. We sat in the stuffy plane on the runway close to 3 hours, unsure of what the plan was.

They finally got fueled and said they would fly us back to Denver, and would try to work us in with flights going out the next day. Sean was not sold of the idea of going back West, after we had waited all week to get home. We figured it would again take them 2 days to get us all seats on the same plane. So, we decided to try renting a car, or looking at the train. The pilot taxied over to a corner of the airport where it was leagal to get off, and let off those who wanted to try to find their own way home.

A kind lady on the plane loaned us her cell phone, and I called my parents and Daniel. Daniel came to the rescue and got us a very luxurious hotel room in the Marriot Rennainsance. They had an airport shuttle, and we were glad to have somewhere to make plans from. We found all the cars were taken until Sunday, and there weren't train seats open until Monday. Hundreds of people from dozens of planes had sudenly been dumped into St. Louis to await better travelling weather. We decided to book another night, and reserved a van for Sunday morning.