Well, they call it Day One but really it's Day Zero by my reckoning. We spent the entire day (twelve+ hours) in airports and on airplanes. Here's something that should seem obvious: Alaska is a looooooooong way from Atlanta!
Pete picked us up at 9:00a and took us to the airport for our 11:15a departure for Minneapolis. Yep, change of planes in Minneapolis -- and then FIVE+ hours in the air from Minneapolis to Fairbanks. The plane was a NW 757 and it was absolutely full. Nothing Gael could do would get us upgraded to First Class for that leg so we sat stoicly in coach, aisles apart. The flight was uneventful (did I mention looooong?) and we arrived in Fairbanks on schedule at 5:10p local. Alaska (at least this part of it) is four hours ahead of Atlanta time. While waiting for our luggage I took these pix:
There were, understandably, a lot of tour group people on our flight and a number of them (about 40) were staying at the same hotel as we were. Celebrity Cruise reps met the flight and quickly sorted out the players and baggage. Our Tour Director is Joy and our driver (Coach #131) is James:
We were bused about fifteen minutes to our home-away-from-home for the next two days, The River's Edge Resort Cottages:
I don't know what we were expecting but the "cottages" were identical 500 square foot buildings perched on the banks of the Chena River. We found them charming; each cottage had a hanging basket of beautiful flowers outside the door:
After a very brief orientation meeting with Joy:
.. the Tour Director for our little group (of 39 I think), we walked about a bit and then went to dinner at the attached restaurant:
The food was very, very good!
Then a brief hike along the nature trail along the river and back to the room. Tomorrow begins with a tour of Fairbanks and environs and we hit the road at 8:20a.
