MSP—>STL; 8,316 steps

And so we arrive at the “Bonus Day” of our trip. Trying to look for a silver lining, I will say that if we hadn’t had to spend the night in Bloomington, MN, we wouldn’t have seen this cool airport art at MSP. That’s the best I can do.

We left our hotel on the first shuttle out, at 4:30 a.m. We were not taking any chances on not getting to the airport on time! Once we arrived, we went to Caribou Coffee to use our meal vouchers for breakfast. Fortunately, we had enough money to each have a coffee and a breakfast sandwich!

We cautiously made our way to our gate, and it seemed like we would be leaving as (re)scheduled. There was a brief moment where the gate agent seemed doubtful, and started trying to put people on alternate flights, but then they decided they were worried for nothing, so we just sat and waited for our boarding time.

The flight wasn’t very full, so we boarded pretty quickly. We buckled in for what was scheduled to be a relatively short flight and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Because the same issue that had delayed the flight the night before (lack of a first officer) was still a problem. They finally found one on an inbound flight, and I assume she hurried over as fast as possible after she landed, and she was cheered by the entire plane when she stepped through the door. I’m not going to lie…I help my breath while they did the pre-flight check because at that point, I was pretty much assuming they were going to find a mechanical issue. They didn’t, though, and we finally took off (after I had already watched most of the first Downton Abbey movie).

We made it home without further complications, and we didn’t even have to wait too long for our luggage.

And that brings us to the end of our trip. It was an amazing experience, even with the trouble we had on the way home. I’m so glad I had this special time with Turkey and Bunny to celebrate their accomplishments before they move on to the next big thing!