ruadisneyfan2
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 20, 2006
Sorry, this is kind of a long story...
We had a lot of credits with SWA due to a change in airlines for better return times for our Alaskan cruise since school starts the next day.
With those credits and an award flight, we booked a 4 day trip to Houston/Galveston due to fly 6:55 this morning. After packing yesterday, put our stuff all by the door and we're about to go to bed, I check the weather one more time and see TS Debby in the gulf, at the time their computer models showed it heading toward TX.
Weather channel is non stop about Debby and storm preparations, shelters, potential for strengthening into a hurricane, etc.
We had to quick decide:
1. go to area prepping for storm and risk not only having a bad vacation but not being able to fly home Wed night as planned.
2. choose another destination to fly to
3. reschedule for later date.
We needed to wake up at 3:30am for our flight and it was already 9pm so we didn't have a lot of time to debate.
I was a bit leery to choose #1 so I voted for #2. Of course airfares were ridiculously high when trying to fly the next day so that eventually ruled out #2. Finally, we chose #3 since our kids have a 4 day weekend in Sept and I already have that time off work. We easily moved our flights to the new date but got stuck eating the 1st night's hotel stay of $184.
So now I'm thinking that mid Sept in the gulf area is just as likely if not more likely than now to have another named storm. Our credits expire 11/20/12 and we already have a cruise scheduled for Nov with flights already bought so we need to make sure we can definitely use these credits in Sept or we will end up losing it all, including our standard award. (not on points)
I'd love to visit GC, San Fran or DL but they're such long flights for just a 4 day weekend; the days we'd fly would be nothing but travel time.
So now we're looking at Denver. SWA has nonstops from Philly so that would be easy and we could still do something fun on our arrival day too.
What is there to do in the Denver area? I always picture white water rafting (we've done that on the Lehigh in PA) but the websites only list dates up to the end of July. I guess after that there's no more snow melt.
I saw the Red Rock Amphitheater and it reminded me of Sedona (which we all loved like crazy) but there's no one playing there we would want to see, again it's only 4 days so not a lot of time.
We like to sight see, bike, kayak, etc but not big on camping or "roughing it". Dh is a bit of a hotel snob.
What else is there to do in the Denver area in mid Sept? Any tips?
It doesn't even have to be Denver but I'm trying to avoid the Atlantic or Gulf due to soon exp date of SWA credits & not a lot of room for error at this point. We have gone to WDW during hurricane season many times but it's usually with the knowledge that we have a year to use our credits if we need to cancel.
Is it a difficult drive to Mt. Rushmore? That's something on dh's bucket list. Google maps estimates it at 6 hrs 19 mins. Is that crazy?
TIA!!
We had a lot of credits with SWA due to a change in airlines for better return times for our Alaskan cruise since school starts the next day.
With those credits and an award flight, we booked a 4 day trip to Houston/Galveston due to fly 6:55 this morning. After packing yesterday, put our stuff all by the door and we're about to go to bed, I check the weather one more time and see TS Debby in the gulf, at the time their computer models showed it heading toward TX.
Weather channel is non stop about Debby and storm preparations, shelters, potential for strengthening into a hurricane, etc.We had to quick decide:
1. go to area prepping for storm and risk not only having a bad vacation but not being able to fly home Wed night as planned.
2. choose another destination to fly to
3. reschedule for later date.
We needed to wake up at 3:30am for our flight and it was already 9pm so we didn't have a lot of time to debate.
I was a bit leery to choose #1 so I voted for #2. Of course airfares were ridiculously high when trying to fly the next day so that eventually ruled out #2. Finally, we chose #3 since our kids have a 4 day weekend in Sept and I already have that time off work. We easily moved our flights to the new date but got stuck eating the 1st night's hotel stay of $184.
So now I'm thinking that mid Sept in the gulf area is just as likely if not more likely than now to have another named storm. Our credits expire 11/20/12 and we already have a cruise scheduled for Nov with flights already bought so we need to make sure we can definitely use these credits in Sept or we will end up losing it all, including our standard award. (not on points)
I'd love to visit GC, San Fran or DL but they're such long flights for just a 4 day weekend; the days we'd fly would be nothing but travel time.
So now we're looking at Denver. SWA has nonstops from Philly so that would be easy and we could still do something fun on our arrival day too.
What is there to do in the Denver area? I always picture white water rafting (we've done that on the Lehigh in PA) but the websites only list dates up to the end of July. I guess after that there's no more snow melt.
I saw the Red Rock Amphitheater and it reminded me of Sedona (which we all loved like crazy) but there's no one playing there we would want to see, again it's only 4 days so not a lot of time.
We like to sight see, bike, kayak, etc but not big on camping or "roughing it". Dh is a bit of a hotel snob.
What else is there to do in the Denver area in mid Sept? Any tips?
It doesn't even have to be Denver but I'm trying to avoid the Atlantic or Gulf due to soon exp date of SWA credits & not a lot of room for error at this point. We have gone to WDW during hurricane season many times but it's usually with the knowledge that we have a year to use our credits if we need to cancel.
Is it a difficult drive to Mt. Rushmore? That's something on dh's bucket list. Google maps estimates it at 6 hrs 19 mins. Is that crazy?
TIA!!
