Yellowstone! – Day Seven Thursday August 26, 1999

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We made our way out of Jackson and back to Pocatello via the scenic route, over the Teton Pass. We went this way partially because I didn’t want to go into the lower plains any sooner than I had to, and partly because everywhere we went that damn WYDOT (Wyoming Department of Transportation) was tearing up the roads.

Each time we ran into construction, they were making the traffic go in one-way switch-offs for 30 minutes at a time. Every main road into Jackson was under construction for miles on end. The road over Teton pass isn’t considered one of tha main roads, and we only hit one construction zone, and they hadn’t got the flagmen out yet.

We arrived in Pocatello with 2 hours to spare before our flight. We killed a little time in the town, which really isn’t such a bad place, but it really does feel isolated.

Our flights were on-time and completely uneventful, which seems to be a first for me.

Our arrival in Phoenix gave us just about 18 hours before my in-laws would have to be back at the airport to return to Taiwan. Murphy’s Law being what it is demanded that something go wrong, in this case, our luggage never left Salt Lake City.

After discovering that every last piece of our luggage was missing, we informed Delta. They informed us that it had been left behind, but would be on the 11:30 flight, and they’d deliver it to us right away.

“It will probably be very late tonight”, they warned us,

“No problem”, we said, “We’ll wait up.”

We went home and waited. At 11:45 I checked the Delta lost baggage tracking web page. According to the page, all luggage had arrived in Phoenix and would be delivered to our home address (which they had correctly) between 11:30 and 3:30 AM. We staid awake waiting for the luggage that never came.

Finally, at 5:00AM, we called Delta.

They said, “Oh, no residential deliveries are made at that hour of night, only to hotels and businesses.”

(“What businesses would these be?”, I asked myself, “7-11s?”) Finally at 6:45AM this morning, our luggage arrived – intact and complete. Our voyage now complete.

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