Pupletts in Sweden: USA Trip (12th Sep - 8th Oct) - Day 4

This was a very early day. We had a 6am flight from LAX (which was fortunately delayed from 5:30am), so we were up at 3:30am to be ready to catch the airport shuttle. While the airport was only about 15min away, the shuttles came every half hour, so there was a risk that we could have a 30min wait before we could catch it.

The biggest trouble we had (other than waking up the boys who had only gotten back about 4 hours earlier) was the fact that the domestic flights came with no checked luggage allowance. We had flown over from Australia with three big bags and while Kristine had made us all bags that were an exact fit for the carry-on allowance we had bought some things at Blizzcon and in LA and there was no way we were getting everything in carry-on. It was US$45 for a bag each way and in the end it was less stress to just pay for three bags and not stress about packing.

When we were lining up to board we noticed that many of the passengers had quite large carry-on bags, so we might have been able to get away with more.

Our first flight was from LAX to Detroit, which was about 4.5hrs with a time zone change that added an additional 2 hours to the current time. When we landed in Detroit and the plane was taxiing to the terminal we realised that our connecting plane had started boarding 3 minutes ago. We landed in Terminal A and our flight was from Terminal C.

The flight crew asked that everyone remained seated so that those with a connection could get off first, but we were right at the back of the plane and everyone stood and pushed forwards, so we were last off. By now we were about 10 minutes from 'boarding closing' so we ran through the airport. It didn't look far on the map, but it felt like miles. When we arrived at the gate they were still only boarding group 5 and we were group 8 (at the back of the plane again).

This time we flew in a Bombardier CRJ-900 which was a much smaller plane and it was completely full.

Our next flight was Detroit to Saginaw (Midlands Airport) which was a total of 45minutes. The flight was so short the flight attendants remained seated the whole time and there was no in-flight service. The flight to Melbourne from Adelaide always felt short, but this one too more time boarding that it did flying.

We picked up our car and drove to Flint, where we would be staying.

Overall our movements for this day were a little strange - Detroit airport was only an hour drive to Flint where we would be staying, and Saginaw airport was 55min from it, meaning that Flint was almost in the middle of the two cities.

So why didn't we just fly to Detroit, why bother flying to Saginaw? For some reason the tickets were cheaper to do both flights than the single one, car hire was cheaper from Saginaw, traffic was less and our family were in Saginaw.

The car pick-up went smoothly and we drove down to our house in Flint. Flint is not really the most desirable location in Michigan, it's an industrial city with quite a high crime rate and high unemployment. Our accommodation was from Stayz and was an old style two story house (plus basement). It was an older house and our relatives were worried about the area, but overall it was comfortable and we never felt unsafe.

Once we'd checked in and dumped the bags we headed out to Walmart to stock up and buy food for dinner.