Denise's dad, Doyal Abbott, agreed to take us to the airport so we would not have to leave our car there for over a week. He picked us up about 5:30 and we arrived at Raleigh Durham Airport (RDU) around 5:45 for our 8:10 flight. We unloaded our bags from the back of the van and said goodbye. Just after Doyal left, we noticed that we were missing our hang-up bag! Since he did not have a cell phone and was going back to our house to drop off the van and do some yard work, we had to call Doyal's wife, Dolores, and ask her travel to our house and have him return to RDU with our bag. He arrived about 6:15 and this time we made sure that all our luggage was our possession before we let him go a second time.
This goof turned out to be an omen of how our flight to Alaska was going to be. When we checked in with the porter, we were then notified that we had met some criteria to have our luggage hand-searched. That required standing in a special line and waiting for about 20 minutes while the security guards unpacked and re-packed all our checked bags. We then went to the security lines for carry-on bags. Denise had packed a bag of quarters which forced the security folks to hand search and identify the x-ray proof item. We finally made it to our departure gate at about 7:15. When I checked in, they told me that were had been randomly selected to be searched! This time we had to stand with our arms outstretched while they used a medal detector wand to examine use. We also had to have our ankles hand checked, then remove our shoes and have the soles of our feet checked with the wand and then finally have our carry-on baggage unpacked and re-packed. Now every item we had brought had been handled by the security staff.
At last we got on our plane and headed for our first destination (Minneapolis-St. Paul). Flight time was about 2 hours and we had a 1 hour layover there. We split a slim-fast bar and a bottle of water since we were going to be served lunch on the next leg of our flight. Denise was once again randomly selected to be searched as we were boarding the second flight. On board, lunch was an oriental chicken, rice, green beans - which was quite good. This next segment was about 5 hours and the last hour or so we were flying over mountains and glaciers of coastal Alaska. We arrived in Anchorage and met the HAL folks at the baggage claim area. Once we collected our luggage and handed them over to the HAL folks, we got on our bus to the hotel.
The bus driver had folks for 3 different hotels and could not drop us by the Marriott due to other busses at the curb. He ended driving around Anchorage and giving us a mini-tour. In the process, he told us of several restaurants and places to see while in-route. After getting to the hotel and finding our room, we left to find dinner. We ended up eating at the Glacier Brewhouse and walking around Anchorage to do a little sightseeing.
On our way back to the hotel, we found a breakfast place that opened in time for us to get breakfast before we would leave in the morning. We returned to the hotel and repacked so we could send most of our bags on to the ship (no need lugging them around the next few days if we could avoid it).