2006-07-02 The Journey 2006-07-03 Orcas Island 2006-07-04 Orcas Island to Victoria 2006-07-05 Victoria to Olympic NP 2006-07-06 Olympic NP 2006-07-07 Olympic NP to Seattle 2006-07-08 Seattle CVS

Update:  Seven weeks after the trip, I finally received word from the travel insurance company (TripMate), who declined to pay me one thin dime in benefits for the travel hell that is described below, even though "common carrier delay" is supposedly covered in the policy.  I paid them more than $200 to purchase the policy.  All I asked for is $100 back (the stated per-diem benefit for travel delays.)  They certainly will not be getting any money or glowing reviews out of me at any point in the future.

The Trip That Almost Wasn't, or Why I'll Never Fly Frontier Airlines Again

July 1.  Saturday.  Day 0.  I had booked a 6:25 flight out of Bergstrom on Frontier, connecting through Denver.  I'm normally a Continental man, but Frontier was significantly cheaper, the connection was significantly faster, and the flight was earlier in the day.  I envisioned getting to Seattle early enough to shuttle up to Anacortes and log some relaxation time at the Majestic Inn & Spa.  The Backroads tour was scheduled to depart from Anacortes on Sunday about mid morning.

Austin's airport is rarely ever very busy, and even less so at 6:30 AM on a Saturday morning.  But I didn't take into account the holiday weekend.  It took me longer than expected to find a parking spot, and the parking shuttles weren't running on schedule.  So it was about 5:30 by the time I hoofed it into the terminal from the back 40.  Yeah, I know you're supposed to get there an hour early.  But it's a small airport, and I've made many flights out of Bergstrom with much tighter margins than that.  After all, it was a 6:30 AM flight.  How full could it really be?

Too full, as it turns out.  There was a bit of a line at the Frontier counter, and it took me a few minutes to nose my way through the maze and find the cheese.  It was probably around 5:40 by the time I got to the head of the line, but the line was being held up at that point by a heated argument between the couple directly in front of me and the ticketing agent.  I overheard some of the conversation and became concerned, because it appeared that the couple was not being allowed to check in for the 6:25 flight.  No matter what logic the couple tried to impart, the ticketing agent kept droning on and on that they had missed the flight -- a ridiculous assertion, considering that there was no line at security and the flight wouldn't even begin boarding for at least another 20 minutes.  By the time the next ticketing agent became available (the couple was still arguing with the first), it became unfortunately apparent that I was going to be treated to the same song and dance.  Without any sort of explanation as to what was going on, I was issued a standby pass for the 2:30 flight that afternoon, which would put me in Seattle at 7:40 PM.

Reset.  Delay of game.  I called the shuttle company that would be taking me from Sea-Tac to Anacortes and changed my reservation from the 11 AM shuttle to the 9 PM shuttle, which would pull into Anacortes at 11:30 PM.  So much for relaxation time ...  Frontier wouldn't even begin checking in the 2:30 flight until 11:30 AM, so I just went home and got a few more hours' sleep.  I returned promptly at 11:30, checked in standby for the 2:30 flight, got my luggage squared away, breezed through security, and waited around for another 2 1/2 hours until the flight began boarding.  As boarding time approached, however, my sense of boredom and annoyance turned into a sense of panic as it became apparent that the 2:30 flight was oversold.  I ran into the couple from that morning, who informed me that the earlier flight had also been oversold.  Apparently it's Frontier's policy to tell bumped passengers that they missed the flight, because then the airline doesn't have to compensate them in any way.

Given that a handful of other people were also flying standby on the oversold 2:30, most of them the same people who had been refused check-in that morning, my battleship was sunk.  I had to wait until the flight was completely boarded before the gate agent would even talk to me.  In her defense, she did try a little bit harder than the drones who were working the counter that morning.  But her efforts were ultimately futile.  The best she could give me is a 90% chance of getting on the 6:45 PM flight to Denver, but there was a 100% chance that I would get stuck in the hub overnight and no guarantee that I'd actually make it to Seattle until Monday.  No other airlines had any seats available from Austin to Seattle, either, at least none that would get me there in time for the tour departure.

Reset.  Drop back and punt.  I drove home from the airport for the second time that day and scrambled to try and figure out what I was going to do.  Would I have to abandon the trip altogether?  I was halfway formulating a last-minute road trip to Colorado or Arkansas in my head, because darned if I was going to sit at home on my week off.  In a moment of clarity and desperation, I got on the Internet to see if I could find a one-way ticket to Seattle for Sunday.  I found one and only one:  Austin to Seattle through Memphis at 6 AM Sunday morning, $300.  Memphis is two hours in the wrong direction, so the flight time for this ticket was over 7 hours.

The first phone call I made was to Backroads, who were probably the only sane people I had spoken to all day long.  They worked me through the logistics of how to catch up with the tour.  Assuming I bought the ticket through Memphis, the tour group would be long gone from Anacortes by the time I was touching down at Sea-Tac on Sunday morning.  But if I caught the noon shuttle to Anacortes and the 2:45 ferry to Orcas Island, then I'd probably get to the hotel at about the same time that the group was returning from the first day's excursion.  I would have missed a day of activities, but I could at least join them for dinner.  The next call I made was to the trip insurance company.  I'd paid a couple of hundred bucks to get insurance on this trip, which covered all manner of cancellations and delays.  So they should be able to help me out, right?  Wrong.  As it was a holiday weekend, most of their staff was out.  The person manning the phones didn't know much, but she did say that while she wasn't allowed to give me advice, she strongly advised me to catch up to the trip, as a full refund would likely not be issued.  At the very least, I would have to submit a lot of paperwork and wait weeks or months for the claim to be processed.

I hung up and clicked "buy" on the $300 Northwest ticket, but no sooner had I done that than Travelocity reported that the ticket had gone up to $600.  %$@#!  So now I was faced with either throwing away a $2200 tour or paying 25% more to pull 83% of it out of the bowl.  Note to self:  trip insurance is useless!

I bit the bullet and bought the ticket, as you have probably already guessed from the fact that the journal doesn't end here.

Day 1 - Sunday, July 2, 2006

Not apt to make the same mistake as yesterday, I showed up to check in for my 6:05 flight at 4:15 AM, before the airport was even open, having slept basically not at all on Saturday night.  When the ticket agents started showing up 15 minutes later, I was first in line to check in.  No problemo.  I hauled my checked bag over to the conveyor and handed it to the stony-faced X-Ray dude.  No problemo.  I went through the security checkpoint.  !Problemo!  Apparently, when you're a single male traveler flying alone with a one-way cross-country ticket that you've just purchased the day before, you can bank on the fact that the TSA will choose you "at random" for "additional screening."  "Additional screening", in this case, meant searching every nook and cranny of every bag and pocket I had, wanding me, feeling me up, measuring my inseam, and basically doing everything possible (short of pulling out a latex glove and calling in the hounds) to make me feel like a prison inmate who had just dropped the soap.  Meanwhile, the real terrorists were probably breezing through with round-trip tickets in hand.  But at this point, I was so completely spaced out from lack of sleep that I could barely even muster a look of protracted annoyance.

It was probably 5:00 by the time security got through with me.  Good thing I showed up early.  The flights from Austin to Memphis and Memphis to Seattle went smoothly, minus the fact that I got stuck in one of the exit row seats that doesn't recline.  The plane touched down at Sea-Tac at around 11:15 AM PDT.  I had already booked the noon shuttle bus to Anacortes, which is nominally 2 hours' drive from Sea-Tac.  No delay at baggage claim, and the bus was only a few minutes late.  But it was making all of the stops along I-5, so it began to look as if we weren't going to make the Anacortes ferry terminal in time for the 2:45 departure to Orcas Island.  There was another ferry to Orcas at 5:45, but at this point I was so completely sick of traveling (not to mention sick, period -- I was recovering from a summer cold) that the idea of being delayed another 3 hours was just more than I could bear.  I hadn't slept more than 6 out of the past 72 hours, and all I could see was a hot meal and a soft pillow somewhere across the strait.

The bus pulled into the Anacortes ferry terminal at exactly 2:45, but fortunately the ferry was running about 5 minutes late.  A group of excessively chatty Houston school teachers who had ridden up on the same bus told me to run ahead and hold the ferry for them.  I cast them a "what? are you kidding me?" look as I broke into a flat sprint across the parking lot with my luggage in tow, begged and pleaded the people who were standing in line for a later ferry to let me cut in front of them, hastily bought a ticket, and jumped on board right as the gate was closing.

Washington State Ferries, a division of the Washington Dept. of Transportation, is the largest ferry system in the U.S. and the third largest in the world, with more yearly ridership than the entire Amtrak network (although, these days, that's not saying much.)  WSF's primary routes cut across Puget Sound, linking the less populous Olympic Peninsula to the more populous I-5 corridor and Seattle, but there is also a major ferry route that connects Anacortes on the mainland to the San Juan Islands and Sidney, BC on Vancouver Island (a short drive from Victoria.)  The largest ferries in the fleet are capable of carrying 2500 passengers and more than 200 vehicles.

I spent most of the 70-minute ride wandering aimlessly around the spacious (and heated) passenger deck, stepping out onto the rear observation platform a few times to snap pictures of the islands and Mt. Baker and to enjoy the crisp 50-something degree air.  The ferry pulled into Orcas at around 4 PM, and I called up Orcas Taxi to see if they could send a cab over.  They told me that they had a $5 shuttle bus that should be pulling into the ferry terminal any minute.  Even better.  But this bus was also making all of the stops.  He had to take a group of boaters all the way around to Deer Harbor, in the opposite direction from my hotel.  Then he stopped in Eastsound to fill up what had to be a 500-gallon gas tank and chew the fat with the locals.  "Island time," he said.  Then he took me on a nickel tour through the state park for reasons that I can't comprehend, since I was the only one left on the bus.  By this point, I had been on the bus for about an hour, and I was getting dangerously queasy from the diesel fumes (I'm allergic to sulfur dioxide), the lack of sleep, the bumpy roads, and the afore-mentioned cold I was fighting.  Had the bus pulled into Rosario literally 30 seconds later, I was going to blow groceries.

Rosario is a small resort village on the eastern shore of East Sound, a fjord-like inlet that separates the eastern and western arms of Orcas Island.  The town is named after a turn-of-the-century mansion, built by shipping magnate and former Seattle mayor Robert Moran when doctors told him that he had only a year left to live.  In 1906, Moran retired to Orcas Island and began acquiring what would become a 7800-acre estate.  Apparently the island air improved his condition, however, because Moran ultimately lived another 37 years beyond his doctors' expectations, dying at the ripe old age of 86 in 1943.  Moran had managed to sell or give away all of his estate by the time he died, with 3600 acres of it being donated to the state in 1921 and 1928 for the formation of Moran State Park.  The estate changed hands many times in intervening years, but the Rosario Mansion, marina, and surrounding buildings are still privately held and are now maintained as a resort.  The mansion itself serves as a restaurant and a museum.

The Cascade Harbor Inn is just up the hill from Rosario and is built into the hill in such a way that every room has a view of the sound.  I checked into the hotel and met the guides, who gave me a rundown of the itinerary for tomorrow and dinner plans for that evening.  At that point, though, I was too tired and nauseous to even consider eating.  I had been on the road for 12 hours, and I fell into bed and slept for another 12.