I TOOK AN UNEXPECTED ROAD TRIP

Sometimes you just want to get home

By Ellen Donker

When it comes to air travel, I have one rule: fly nonstop whenever possible. Splitting up a flight leaves you open to delays on top of other typical travel woes: weather problems, TSA workers not getting paid, airline staffing shortages and more. The less time I spend in an airport the better.

Unfortunately, I broke my rule a few weeks ago. I dragged my heels getting tickets to Fort Myers, Florida for spring break. By the time I started looking at flights, nonstops were more than $1,200 round trip. To Florida? There had to be cheaper flights. Of course there were, but they all involved a stop. After evaluating the options with my daughter, Madeline, who would be joining my husband, Rob, and me, we booked round-trip flights via Spirit Air that were routed through Detroit with fairly short layovers.

The outbound flights went off without a hitch. Spirit Air is no frills to the extreme, but we made it to Fort Myers in good time. When it was time to go home, we had a flight that landed in Detroit around 7:15 p.m. With a 2.5-hour layover, we headed to a restaurant for dinner. As we were deciding on our order, Madeline saw a text that Spirit had canceled the flight. The worst part was that there were no more flights out that night.

While we waited to get our dinner, we contemplated our options, wondering whether Spirit would pay for our hotel or whether there was another carrier that had a flight to Newark that night. So many questions and so many Google searches. Then I thought about how long it would take to drive home. I had driven to Michigan in the past. It was shorter than I anticipated and not nearly as far as the 15-hour drives I had taken to Chicago over the years. Apple Maps estimated nine hours. We could be home by 6:30 a.m. the next day.

I asked Rob and Madeline, What if? Was a nine-hour drive in the middle of the night ridiculous? I even put the question to our waitress. She confirmed our feeling that the drive sounded doable.

Our next stop was the Spirit Air desk to get some sort of refund or to confirm our options. The long, snaking line looked like it would take at least an hour to get through. I couldn’t do it. Instead, we headed to a rental car shuttle. By 9:30 p.m. we were on the road.

So started a long, dark and tedious trip in which Madeline and I split the driving. To pass the time, we chose an audiobook: Ain’t Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton by Martha Ackmann. We have listened to audiobooks about Barbra Streisand, Paul Simon and Steve Martin, so we figured one about Dolly Parton would keep us entertained. Our food for the road was whatever we had in our backpacks: peanut M&Ms and potato chips.

Thankfully, our drive was uneventful, just monotonous with our eyes trained on the lane markings and the tractor-trailer ahead of us. We finally entered New Jersey as the sun was coming up and pulled into our driveway at about 7 a.m. I was just happy to be home and knew that driving had been the right decision. I went straight to the kitchen and made some eggs – after all, it was breakfast time – and then took a two-hour nap.

I can’t say I’ll never take a flight with a layover. Sometimes, you can’t avoid it. But perhaps the lesson learned is to start out early so your final connection isn’t the last flight out. Although the long drive was tolerable, I don’t want to do it again anytime soon. Still, I gained a family memory and now have a new story to tell.