Jack Flaherty

Picking up on last week’s part of my family’s trip to Alaska:

Finally, we came into the city, that being Minneapolis. We pulled up to our hotel. It was pretty easy to picture in your brain. It had four or five floors. It was a Hampton Inn Suites.

We unloaded the car and headed over to the fancy (you can say that in a British accent if you want) entrance. Actually, it was not that fancy; it was just sliding doors.

We went inside and checked in. The good news is we were on the fifth floor. The bad news is that we had no view of the airport runways. But our room was quite cozy. It had the essentials. Beds and a bathroom.

My 13-year-old brother Andrew decided to go to sleep. We said no, let’s go eat dinner.

We drove and ate at a Mexican restaurant. I just had my usual Mexican food. A quesadilla. It was very cheesy, like an over-cheese pizza.

We went out and came back to the hotel. We hung out a little until it was like 9:45 p.m. Then we brushed our teeth and turned off our lights.

If you don’t know, at home I sleep on a queen-sized bed. And now I am sharing a sleeping space with my mom. And both my parents snore, and my brother farts.

My parents slept great. My brother and I lay awake for … a couple of hours. Finally, we fell asleep.

When we woke up the next morning, we told Mom and Dad what a ruckus they had made. They looked at us sheepishly and said sorry. We went to eat breakfast. My Mom had this whole lecture about water, fruit and vegetables.

The airport, by the way, is a big honkin’ thing. The parking garage was big enough and had plenty of room for your … never mind. The garage looked like it was taken to the Chicago airport and filled up, so we could not find a parking spot. When we did find a spot, it was in the middle of the “army base.” That’s a metaphor, by the way. We did not just wander into the middle of an army base.

We left the stuff we did not need to bring with us to Alaska, like a broken coffee mug. We did not go to Alaska with a trash mug.

We got out to the elevator. The elevator was cool. It had windows in its shaft, and it was like 11 floors high. When we got out, we saw a big room full of people trying to check-in through the huge crowd. We got in line for one hour straight. The wait was kinda worth it, though. We got to the counter.

“Can I help you?” asked the airport manager. We told her our destination and our plane. We paid and got our boarding passes. Step 1 complete.

Now step 2, security. We rode up the escalators and saw the security line. “Oh come ON, you got to be kiddin’ me!” groaned Andrew. So another hour of standing and walking slowly was at hand.

Soon our plane was ready for boarding, and we got to the gate. We inserted our boarding passes and walked through the gate and onto the plane. We found our seats and immediately opened the slide to see out the windows. There was honestly nothing to see. Some workers outside worked on refueling and airing the tires.

Stuffed in a pocket at the back of the seat in front of me was a little magazine about airline safety. It said stuff like “Your safety is our priority” and how to buckle your seatbelt, which to me was not all that difficult.

The wait to take off was like a full average nap time!

Then the plane got pulled back by the little trolley thing. We were moving! We began to drive over to our runway. Then we started to get somewhere on the runway at highway speed. Handy tip: Always stuff your pack or purse under the seat in front of you during the run on the runway. The flight attendant says so. Soon we were in the air. And already a baby was crying!

Then the boredom began to drive us all crazy. My mom was clearly sleeping for the third time today. The flight began to get slower and slower. My mom taught Andrew how to play solitaire. After he learned that, that’s all my brother could do for the rest of the flight.

I tried to take a nap. 1. I kinda stink at taking naps. 2. It’s hard to sleep when there is constant rumbling around you.

Then our obviously favorite part of the trip … laying eyes on the massive mountains. Then we knew it was obvious that we were in Alaska. The flight still seemed endless. My brother finally, after 30 long minutes, looked up from his game. Then we saw some mini towns below.

And it happened! We landed!

Part 3 of Jack’s Alaskan adventure will be continued in a future story on this page.

Jack Flaherty, age 11, lives in Marquette and enjoys relaxing and reading. He wants to be an author, a pilot and an architect. He loves watching planes and flying in them. In addition to enjoying seeing huge buildings, such as skyscrapers and museums, he likes pizza, cookies, cupcakes and brownies while also enjoying video games, board games and card games.