Hello USA … and Home … SFO-DEN-COS

Our 7,415-mile SYD-SFO flight — estimated at 13 hours and 13-minutes when we were on the ground at SYD — is now in the completed column of our trip.

Though the remainder of the flight after I stopped writing to catch a few winks was uneventful, turbulence made it bumpy more often than not. I am not sure how long I slept, but we had just two hours left to reach SFO when I woke up. Breakfast was a choice of frittata or avocado toast. We both went with the latter … served with a bowl of cut up fruit. By the time the trays were taken away, we were just ½-hour from landing … the sun rising on the horizon.

By 6:41a, we were at the gate and deplaning. Global Entry worked like a charm, though the agent did have to take another photo of us for some reason. Collecting our bags, we went through customs, dropped off our checked bags with the United agents on the other side, and headed to the Polaris Lounge to kill the 3-hour layover before the second flight of our travel day.

UA501 from SFO to DEN was 30 minutes late departing. Regardless, we would have landed at DEN earlier than scheduled if not for having to circle around a bit. No idea if the reason for doing so was heavy air traffic or the strong winds that caused our bumpy but otherwise uneventful flight to be even bumpier on approach. As it was, the delay in landing was just 4 minutes … not bad at all.

We left SFO under clear skies … and I got to see quite a bit of the three states we overflew — California, Nevada, and Utah — before we started encountering cloud cover at the Colorado border. I especially enjoyed seeing the red rock country of Utah. Unfortunately, the porthole was hazy and scratchy so getting decent shots was mostly a lose proposition.

We had only about an hour before our flight to COS took-off from DEN. We spent about half of that time just getting from gate B22 where we landed to B56 where a Canadair Regional Jet was waiting to whisk us home. Boarding was called within minutes of arriving at the gate, so all good.

The flight to COS from DEN is ridiculously short. In fact, it takes longer to taxi and take off than it does to actually fly. The latter was about 15 minutes or so. Any other time, we would have just booked the flight to DEN and then rented a car to drive home. But I figured Mui would be too tired after the first two flights and the 16-hour time difference. Considering he had a hard time keeping his eyes open on the SFO-DEN flight, I think flying to COS was a good idea.

The turbulence that we experienced landing at DEN was with us again when we took off. Our small aircraft experienced a lot of rattling. This entire trip from SYD to COS is going to go down in our travel book as the bumpiest ever.

Deplaning at our regional airport was quick and easy. Bags showed up on the carousel fast and we didn’t have to wait long for an Uber. By 6:00p, we were home and Mui was on his way to the grocery store … to pick up a few things for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow.

Much as we love traveling, we are happy to be home. We had a terrific time in Australia. But it is now time to relax at home for a few months before we head off again.もっと詳しく