Coming Home On Part 1: Leaving Bainbridge

Time had come to bid our daughter's family goodbye for now.  I was taken aback by the price of Seattle-Anchorage tickets when I was booking our flight home.  I don't remember the details, but I just remember the 10 am flight was higher than normal and the later flights were even worse. 

Problem is we start off from Bainbridge Island.  That means you have a 35 minute ferry ride to downtown Seattle.  Then either a walk to the light rail and to the airport, or get a cab.  Cabs are $40 plus tip.  Light rail, for seniors, is $1 each.  So if there's time and it's not raining hard, we go light rail.  

This winter my daughter warned me about delays with the ferries and some ferries getting cancelled meaning you have to wait 50 minutes or more for the next one.  There were some problems with the ferries themselves, but mostly it's a staffing issue.  Lots of retirees recently and new people need special training and aren't as experienced. 

I even signed up for notifications when there was a delay or cancellation on the Seattle-Bainbridge ferry.  This was helpful to get a sense of how often there were delays and cancellations. I got fewer alerts as time went by and there were far fewer cancellations.

But that makes planning a trip to the airport a real pain. Especially when I think of the 10 minutes it takes to get to the Anchorage airport from our house. An 8am flight means getting up really early and hoping your ferry is close to on time.

On the Bainbridge Ferry page there's a link to get text message alerts on the left.  And a cool link is a real time map of where the ferries are - usually there are two ferries going between Bainbridge and Seattle.  

You can see the Tacoma is coming from Bainbridge to Seattle and the Chimacum is in the opposite direction.  There's also one coming toward Seattle from Bremerton.  

So rather than mess with the ferry early in the morning, we got a hotel room at the airport.  It was much cheaper than booking a later flight. An old high school friend who lives in Seattle, picked us up at the ferry Thursday afternoon and we had a great Ethiopian dinner (the special veggie combo at Delish) before he dropped us off at the hotel.  

One other tip I'll mention for people catching a flight from SEATAC (the Seattle Tacoma airport) is SPOTSAVER.   You can go on line and reserve a spot in the TSA line.  You tell them a time and you've got 15 minutes before and after and that gets you into a much shorter line.  I didn't think it would be necessary for an 8am flight but I signed up anyway.  Problem was they only offered appointments at 4:30am and 7am.  We wanted to arrive around 6:30 am.  So I booked 7am.  Good thing I did.  There was a long line.  I explained my 7am reservation and he let us go through.  SPOTSAVER was even shorter than the TSA precheck line.  

When we got to the gate, I was a little tempted to go to Gate 18 instead of 17, but I resisted.  

Sorry, it's out of focus, but you can read the destinations.  

This was originally going to be about how beautiful it was in Anchorage when we arrived, but it seemed like a better idea to make two posts.  Part II will be soon.