The end

Well, it's all over!!!

Our last couple hours in Tulsa were pretty quiet. We got up, got our stuff together, and headed for the airport. Not much to do when you've gotta get out and also don't have a car.


Our flight left Tulsa at 4:30 PM CDT. We got to the airport around 3:15, which worked quite well. Security was, as always, a pain, at least for me, unloading all my stuff. But it really wasn't any big hassel. I tried to go find wifi while Jim and Chris chatted. Thankfully Josh called me when we boarded earlier than expected :) We'd checked in the night before, so we were near the front of the boarding line (and flying Southwest), so we had choice of seats. Everything went smoothly and we pulled back a few minutes early and within minutes, Josh was flying for the first time...


Flight to St. Louis took only about 55 minutes. On the descent into Lambert Field, you could easily see the huge flooding that is taking place to the north... sometimes 2-3 miles of fields were inundated.
We entered the pattern for one circuit... allowing us to get good views of downtown and the Arch, then landed from the east or southeast.

Part of St. Louis (I think!) and the flooded river
Next up: almost 3 hour layover in St. Louis!
We decided to get some overpriced airport food to try to speed things along. Then it was just killing more time.

Thankfully our flight to Orlando got out on time. This flight was moderately full (the first one was quite barren). Taking off near sunset (8:15 CDT) offered some quite impressive views.

I also got my GPS to work on this flight, though my poor laptop battery made it so I could only turn the computer on for segments. It was pretty cool being able to follow your position, speed, and altitude as we progressed along. We passed right over Paducah, KY, and then near Nashville and Chattanooga.

The GPS track segments (in blue)


There were apparently a few residual storms left over Florida as we got into the state, as we had a bit of minor turbulence. Unfortunately that caused the pilot to ask for electronic devices to be shut off early, so I couldn't track us going over Gainesville and the northern suburbs of Orlando. Oh well!
It also meant no pictures as we came down over Orlando... that was a pity, it was, as always, quite a sight.

Sunset and the Ohio River
We swooped south down to near Disney, then made the left turn and landed from the south. It's quite rare to land from the south in the summer (you fly into the prevailing wind... we typically only get north winds after a cold front passes in the winter!).

We took the fun tram thing back to the main terminal, grabbed our bags almost immediately off the carousel, and waited for pickup.


Within the hour we were back at Chris'. Just for fun, we finished the night off with a trip to Whataburger with Jeff Ottum. And that was all she wrote.


I hope everyone enjoyed reading the blog!

Have a good one, God bless...

The end