Apr 9, 2025
A long drive today to get back to the Salt Lake City airport.
Wandered down to the breakfast building dressed in our jackets and beanies just after sunrise. When we had eaten our fill, we returned to the room, checked out, and hit the road.
I’m always impressed with the quality of American roads. Even though ours was a relatively back road, it was still four and sometimes five lanes with regular passing lanes. Made good time and eventually ended up on the I15, which is the road we started on, joining Las Vegas through Salt Lake City right up to the north of the country.
A really good run until we got about 50 miles out of Salt Lake City when traffic turned manic. It’s always disconcerting when cars are legally able to do 130 km/h, but spend their time weaving through four lanes of traffic to get past people.
Eventually we breathed a sigh of relief as we pulled in to the petrol station next to the airport to fill up our rental car before you returning it. Unlike most penny pinching Australian airports, they had a huge waiting area that was free to everybody, and even had several sets of departure and arrival boards prominently displayed in the car park. So we parked the car, and went and bought some lunch, before heading into the rental return area.
Salt Lake City airport is new and modern, and it’s really well designed. Unfortunately, during the afternoon rush they didn’t have all of their security gates manned, so it still took us well over half an hour to be screened. However, when we finally got through we had plenty of time to sit and gaze out the window at the magnificent mountain backdrop while we waited for our plane.
The plane was only half full (and that was mainly first and business class), so in the jargon used we were ‘light loaded’. That meant they had to rearrange all the baggage in the hold to ensure we were properly balanced. Whilst we ended up having a full seat to ourselves, we were late leaving and late arriving, so the Boston airport shuttle bus missed the last train, and we ended up walking the 3km home from the airport at 2 in the morning dragging our suitcases. Nothing was going to deter Nanna from being there when the kids woke up in the morning.
Enjoy your time with your family.
From one Nanna to another – totally understand 😊