Honeymoon: Day 9

Sunday, July 5, 2009---The End of the Road

After spending a very comfortable night in the lovely hotel in downtown Portland, Jacob and I woke to get packed, checked out, and ready to head to the airport for our flight back to Colorado.

But we had some time to kill...so we dropped all our luggage at the car that was parked a few blocks away and made our way down by the river again. Every week there is a little sidewalk shop open with many a food, craft and art booths to behold. We needed some breakfast and so treated ourselves to an "elephant ear" which is basically a big flat scone type dough that is fried and then coated, and I do mean coated, with whatever topping you want. We got cinnamon and sugar as apparently it is the "original" elephant ear topping. It was delicious that is for sure.

After perusing around he booths we decided we should get on our way to the airport. We still had plenty of time but wanted to make sure we had enough time to fill the rental car with gas before returning it. This turned out to be more of an adventure than anticipated. We ended up having to stop at a hotel to ask the front desk receptionist where the closest gas station was. And I witnessed first hand Oregon's weird law about not pumping your own gas. So silly to me.

So, we returned the rental car and then tried to manage all of our luggage as we walked to the check in counter. We had been able to pack up most of our wedding gifts from the Hillsboro open house but that meant we both had the maximum amount of free luggage allotted by Southwest. It was a lot. And the walk from the rental car return to the check in counter turned out to be a little bit longer than expected. I'm sure we looked pretty awkward juggling 4 or 5 pieces of luggage each.

We made it to the counter, checked our luggage, and then learned that our flight had been delayed for some unknown reason. Every other airline with flights into Denver was running on time...but not Southwest. The guy at the terminal said it was because of weather in Denver but I think that was silly. I'm pretty skeptical when every other airline can manage to fly into Denver but we can't. Somethings shady if you ask me. We ultimately ended up with a delayed flight, but not as delayed as it was initially thought to be. Still a little annoying.

But our ride was kind and picked us up in Denver even though we were a couple hours later arriving than we had planned. (Thanks Heather!) We made it home at about 11:30. But we came home to half of our wedding gifts from Utah still wrapped in our front room. (Thanks again to Heather, Lori and Kimber for hauling them from Utah to Colorado!) And unopened gifts were just too much to resist. So we opened them all and had a great time doing it!

It did make for a late evening and Jacob had to work the next day. Luckily, I had taken the day off so I spent my Monday sleeping in and then unpacking, putting things away, and doing laundry.

All in all it was a fantastic trip that went really smoothly. We were able to enjoy parts of the country we had never been to and a whole new country to boot. It was hard coming back and getting back to work but, on the other hand, it has been really fun settling into our house together and adjusting to real life.

Thanks again for all who helped make our wedding and honeymoon a time we will never forget! Special thanks to all the friends and family who helped celebrate with us. We love you all!