Flight to MKE

On Thursday morning, we finished loading our pictures onto our website for our representative to review, we finished packing and then waited a bit for the shuttle to arrive.
By 10:30 the shuttle was here for us. Door to Door service - not bad! Certainly a lot easier than having us drive to DIA, pay to park and then pick up the car when we return home. Thanks Doug for the tip!

Ride to the airport went relatively well except for the lack of AC on the bus. Very hot and stuffy!
Arrived at the airport at about 1:45PM. Plenty of time to catch our flight to MKE. After checking in and grabbing a bite to eat we walked to the area where our plane would take off only to find that it was going to be delayed another hour. Apparently the plane that we were going to board was coming in from an area where the weather was a bit dicey. We boarded at about 4 only to be told that the weather in MKE was not good and we may have to divert to Minneapolis. In order to be safe, the pilot had the plane filled to the max in case we did have to go to Minneapolis.

Several planes were in line waiting for takeoff. Others had been delayed as well. During our wait time we were treated to a delightful lightning show. Beginning of the flight was a bit bumpy, but as we made it above the clouds all settled down. That is until we neared MKE. We were told by the pilot that he was going to try once to land and if that was not possible we would head north to the Twin Cities.

The clouds that we went through were phenomenal! They were huge! This part of the flight was beautiful, wondrous and a tad frightening all at the same time. I love looking at the various cloud formations and to be right in the middle of them was stunning. By the way, I only lost one fingernail during this time!

As we landed, we noticed that both sides of the runway were covered in water. It was like landing in a lake. We were told later that the airport had actually been closed down a bit before we landed because of tornado warnings. Landing was relatively smooth and we all gave the pilots a big round of applause!

We had to wait for our luggage for a couple of hours because of the torrential downpour and the basement of the airport having too much water in it. Our friend, Paul Fried was again waiting for us at the airport to take us to their home for the weekend. But we could not get out of the airport because it had again been shut down. We were told that we were the last plane to land before closing. Many people apparently spent the nite in the airport waiting for connections. We were very lucky! As soon as luggage was gathered we made our way out of the airport.
Before leaving, we had a chance to watch some of the news reports on TV to find that we had flown through and landed in one of the worst rain storms since 1986. 7" in less than an hour in some parts of the city. A sink hole on the east side that swallowed a car and driver. More rain than the area obviously needed.

Paul found a safe way home and we all headed to bed knowing that we would have to rise early in the morning for a trip to the Clinic for blood work!
Another exciting trip. What else would be coming our way? Wait and see.