July 23, 2016
Alaska Trip - Day 1

7:30am (Central) - I was right. Not much sleep, and that alarm going off at 4am was almost painful. I got about 4 hours of sleep, and I'm definitely dragging this morning. Otherwise, I was right on time arriving at Hobby Airport at 6am. Met my party, got the bags checked, ate a little something, and got through security quickly. Now we're just sitting at the gate waiting to board. We'll be on the plane for about 6 hours because we are stopping in Albuquerque on the way. Arrival in Seattle at 12:05pm local time. I usually can't sleep on planes, but as tired as I am, there's a good chance I will. That is, of course, if this flight isn't the Screaming Baby Express. I have my Bose noise-reduction headphones at the ready!

9:15am (Mountain) - Right on time into Albuquerque, and a very smooth flight. And thankfully, no screamers. People off, people on, and soon on our way to Seattle. It's sunny and 71 here. Nice. I'll be enjoying my banana nut muffin in lieu of peanuts during this segment. Yummy!

11:45am (Pacific) - Another very smooth segment, but we had a little screamer as we descended into Seattle. Luckily, he's in the very back, I'm in the very front. Perfect. We landed 20 minutes early, and typical for Seattle, it's very cloudy. Southwest has a great free TV service onboard, so I was able to catch up with the news. The signal was great and only stuttered a couple of times. Ain't technology great?

10:00pm - Finally settling down for the night. We had a lovely day here in Seattle looking around, but we didn't make it to the Pike's Market yet. We'll do that in the morning since it's very close to the cruise ship terminal. I took what was going to be a short nap that ended up being two hours! I was beat. We later had a delicious dinner at a local Italian restaurant, and enjoyed good conversation and making new friends. Gotta get up early, so off I go. We all look forward to getting aboard the ship tomorrow. So much to see, experience, and most importantly, EAT!