Small town to the Windy city

I was a little nervous about my travels yesterday, because while I have been on plenty of plane rides, this was only my second time alone, and I was a little nervous about my connection flight in Dallas. Basically to get out of Wichita Falls to go anywhere else (unless driving) you have to go to Dallas first. The municipal airport in Wichita Falls is only about 10 minutes from our house which makes it convenient, and it's one terminal, one gate, so not to big and scary. The security was more intense than I was expecting however. You were pretty much forced to check all bags, unless your bag was smaller than a briefcase, I think some kids has backpacks with them though. When the checked our bags, they checked everything. Everything came out of the suitcase and got swiped down. They were HUGE on the liquids thing, so if you didn't check something like hand sanitizer or liquid lip gloss once you went through security with your carry on bag, they made you throw it out. Also, all shoes had to go through the machine at security. I guess I haven't flown in a long time, so I was forgetting how much the whole process sucked.

The plane that we took was pretty hilarious, it had two propellers, and you got to walk out and climb up the stairs to get on it. Once inside I'm thinking that if you were taller than 6 feet you had to duck a little so you didn't bump your head. I'd say there were only about 50 seats on the entire plane. The ride was only 30 minutes so that was a good thing, because I think the pilot only knew how to descend by dropping vertically. It was kind of like a bad ride at Great America. Flying into Dallas was interesting because you could actually see the city limits, and lots of houses for awhile, whereas when we left Wichita Falls, it was like, ok, there's base outside the window and there are the few buildings in Wichita Falls.

The connection went well. We were almost delayed because there were no gates open, but they were able to get some stairs and we climbed off the plane and went into some weird gate. Dallas is a pretty big airport, but not to hard to find the next gates with the tram. I wouldn't really want less than an hour to make a connection flight there though. I had time to grab a sandwich before boarding, and then the plane boarded and left right on time.

Overall a good experience, and flying into Chicago is one of the BEST feelings ever because there are SO many lights, and you can see the lake, and the rivers, and it's pretty amazing. So, I'm glad to be home for a week and enjoying home.