We took a different airline, and a different route, home. The airline we came on had wanted us to take the same plane as the night before, but leaving at 7:00 in the morning--and they wanted us to be at airport at 5:00 in the morning! Yeah, right! So we got them to book us on Frontier Airlines. Our flight left from Montana at 11:20 in the morning, and took us on a short flight to Denver. There was a quick layover in Denver (maybe 30 minutes) and then a longer flight back to Detroit. But, we still got home at the same time as we would have if we'd taken that original 7:00 flight--which we heard from security had been chaos that morning. Thank goodness Daddy got us on a different airline!
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Oh, and about security: we had another run-in with them, but this time they were extremely sympathetic and friendly. :)) You see, the computer identified us for "special screening," probably because it picked up that we'd been through on a different flight yesterday, and now we were back again. You can see how that might look odd. But they were very nice about it. They guided us over to a side area, patted down our upper bodies, rechecked our documents, and went through all of our carry-ons very carefully. But they were polite, and made jokes, and explained everything as they went along, which made the process non-threatening.
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We had a smooth, comfortable, non-traumatic flight home. I think I might fly this Frontier airline again, if I get the opportunity, rather than the other big-name one. The only thing Frontier did that annoyed me was they wouldn't let Andrea use her car seat in their plane, because it didn't have the proper sticker saying it was approved for flying. But I think Andrea was happier without it, anyways. :))
- Here's Andrea, following along with the safety instructions as the flight attendants prepare us for take-off.
- She really seemed to enjoy the plane ride sans car seat.
- This is all we saw of Denver (the airport), but I guess now we can say that we've been there.
- On our connecting flight, we got a larger plane that had the in-flight screens available, that you can follow your trip on. It was kind of neat to watch our progress, and see the speed and elevation, too.
- Andrea was pretty tired on the connecting flight. It was a long day, especially considering the time change made it later for us when we got home. She fell asleep sitting up;
so, we let her stretch out across the seats and take a nice nap.
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We're safely home, and thus ends our cross-continent adventure. :))
By the way, we did about 37 miles of the 71 mile length of the Bighorn River (55 miles of the River are in the actual Canyon). It was quite a long ride, but Andrea loved every minute of it!
We were talking over the day when we suddenly noticed Andrea was sitting there, quietly doing the actions to Patty Cake (pat, roll, throw it in the pan!) all by herself, with no one even singing the song. I guess she was practicing. Too cute! 
It was very windy up there (but Andrea likes that), and the air was thin; it was difficult to breathe if you walked too fast! But the scenery was awesome.
See the little white ribbons going back and forth up the side of the mountain? That's the highway we drove up on!
The fire was mostly out in the area we drove through, but there were still a lot of hot spots--it looked like little camp fires burning all over the hills on either side of the truck. It was quite eerie: the smoke in the air was like thick fog, and the air was hot when we rolled down the windows to try and take some pictures (which didn't work out). But this is what it would have looked like if you had been up in the air, looking down on our little truck on the highway. See the planes dropping fire-retardant chemicals? We saw them landing, loading, and taking off from the airport when we were there.
