Winter 2019 – Work and a little play! – Denver, Seattle & Chicago

Planning and pre-travel

With the wife switching jobs late in the year, the annual holiday just didn’t seem to be happening. So we did the next best thing, use the weekends on a work visit to the USA to do some touristy things. With the tickets and hotel bookings done, we started thinking about our favorite pastime now – Packing!

Lists were drawn up, then a checklist for the list was drawn up, I kid you not! Yes, war did break out when I mentioned that I wanted to check in only one suitcase each. How can any self respecting Indian want to travel with less than the prescribed baggage limit, we always like to be a little over the limit! I might have won the battle but the wife won the war, we went with 2 suitcases and came back with 4! More on this later

With the onset of winter in the States, 46 kgs was accounted for in no time. The packing cubes are a great way to sort your stuff out. My wife made sure it was dummy (me!) proof and labelled each of the cubes to make sure I don’t make a mess of all the stuff when I had to repack (it did help just a tiny bit, but it was a mess alright!)

Travel D – Day

On D-Day, as usual we had more than 3 hours to kill after security and immigration. The wife is as usual cross with me for coming so early, but it does not seem to matter much since we make sure we mark attendance in most of the duty free shops, with me reminding my wife that we are not going to carry stuff for 2 whole weeks. I am promptly reminded that she has to shop for all the folks we will be staying with on the trip.

Long story short, we make it to boarding gate just as the boarding starts only to realize our boarding group is the last. We had close to 30 hours of flying ahead of us – it was going to be tiring to say the least.

Bangalore – Dubai 4 hrs (layover 4 hours)

Dubai – Dallas 16 hours (Layover 5 hours)

Dallas – Denver 2 hours

Dubai was a very short jaunt and we were in the very glitzy Duty Free at Dubai, did a little more shopping for dry fruits and chocolates and settled in the lounge. Killed a couple of hours there and headed to the gate to have another security check before we boarded on flight to Dallas. Seems to be a US specific check since we didn’t have to go through this on our way back. The flight was really long! we saw the sun rise twice, once over Norway and the next over Canada.

Thankfully it wasn’t very bumpy and the entire 16 hours was very smooth, although after 13 hours of flying I found myself getting quite irritable. Emirates is a good airline, gets the job done. This would be my comparison between Qatar and Emirates

Airport – Dubai is better (Shopping and WiFi is better but it does not allow Whatsapp calls)

On board Service – Qatar ( Nothing to complain with Emirates but Qatar seems just that bit better)

Food – Draw(I liked Emirates but wife preferred Qatar)

You can’t go wrong flying either airline but I would prefer travelling in the Airbus A350 over the Boeing 777, Qatar has it but Emirates doesn’t have it as yet. Carbon composite material used in newer aircraft allow the cabin to be pressured to a lower altitude reducing jet lag and those Rolls Royce engines are great!

We finally get to Dallas and it is a little chilly 7 degrees centigrade, it was supposed to be warmer though! We hopped onto our shuttle to the Domestic Terminal, DFW airport is absolutely massive but pretty well organized. We checked in to our flight and then hunted for some lunch and settled in near the gate! I just wanted to sleep while my wife hunted for some nice coffee. This is us on the United flight after close to 30 hours of flying

Well if you thought that was tiring, just see the plan for the rest of my (wife had a different itinerary) trip below

Day 1 – Dallas – Denver

Day 2 – Denver – Sight Seeing Bear Lake

Day 3 – Denver – Dallas

Day 4 to Day 7 – Dallas

Day 8 – Dallas – Seattle

Day 9 Seattle – Mt. Rainer National Park

Day 10 Seattle – Chicago

Day 11 – Day 15 (Me) – Chicago

Day 11 (Wife) – Chicago

Day 12 (Wife) – Chicago – Boston

Day 13 (Wife) – Boston

Day 14 (Wife) – Boston – Chicago

Day 15 – Chicago

Day 16 – Chicago – Bangalore

Well with this long and winding prologue lets start with Denver

Denver

With my cousins staying in Denver, we thought it would be the perfect spot to see the Rockies although Nov is not the best time to do it. We had pretty good weather the day we landed and the next so made full use of it. We had an early dinner as we looked at the Rockies in the distance. The night was cold but I didn’t realize, I was probably asleep before I hit the pillow.

The next day we were up early since we were heading to the Rocky Mountain National Park, a photo log of the journey

We arrived at Bear lake and just about managed to find a parking slot, we were welcomed with ice and a very slippery surface. The dumb tourist that I was, I had left my snow shoes and jackets in our suitcases and come dressed like we were going for a joy ride. I had no idea that the Lake was close to 10,000 feet from sea level! The wife (the smarter one) was dressed right

The sun was out, which made a few patches quite icy and slippery and like a clip out a funny video. One person slipped and fell, trying to check on the person one after another all 4 of us slipped and fell. Must have been a really funny sight!

Some more snaps of the beautiful lake

We managed to leave Bear lake without any more antics and headed straight for downtown Denver. There were warning signs on the roads about the impending arctic blast and bad weather, we decided to walk around a bit before the weather got real cold.

We knew the moment the arctic blast arrived since the wind picked up and froze me to the bone. It was a hasty retreat to the car and those welcoming heated seats! The next day was filled with nothing much other than lazing around since it was snowing most of the day and I had to head to the airport in the afternoon. It was off to work for the next week in Dallas!

Part 2 continued in the next blog , click below- https://signsofawanderer.travel.blog/2019/12/26/winter-2019-part-2-the-rescue-act/