A significant part of the country experienced colder than usual weather starting January 25 and lasting for a while. While Las Vegas escaped most of the cold weather, January 25 was a day I was scheduled to fly from Newark, NJ to Asheville, NC to begin an 11-day Cherokee trip. Both airports were snowed in, and I tried to cope as well as I could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My flight from Las Vegas into Newark was on January 24, arriving about 6:30 p.m. When I arrived, I learned my flight the next day to Asheville was cancelled. I searched for any flight on January 25 that was still open and was traveling from Newark to either Asheville or Atlanta. I found one into Atlanta on Spirit Airlines, leaving at 5 a.m. I booked it, hoping I could travel before the storm hit. At that time, we didn\u2019t know how big the storm was going to be, or exactly when it would strike, but it was supposed to be bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That left me about 10 hours to rent a car, drive two hours to Atlantic City, pick up free play on both Saturday and Sunday, play it off, sleep and eat if I could manage either or both, and then drive two hours back to Newark. When I left Atlantic City at 1 a.m. for the drive back to Newark, the flight status listed online was still \u201con time.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The drive to Newark was dry until I was very close to the airport. I kept driving past signs that told me serious weather conditions were coming, and non-essential driving should be avoided. I kept asking myself what in the hell I was doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I went to check in at Spirit, I discovered my flight had been cancelled — as well as more than 80% of all flights in or out of Newark that day. Spirit had a seat available on a flight to Detroit which was scheduled to fly out soon, and from there, after a six-hour layover, I could fly to Atlanta if that flight didn\u2019t get cancelled. Since some chance of getting to Atlanta on that day was better than no chance, I got on the flight to Detroit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the flight from Newark to Detroit, I had a window seat, and there was only snow to see out there. I couldn\u2019t see the ground at all until just before landing. Detroit had snow, but the airport was operational. Some flights were taking off. Others weren\u2019t — but that was a function of the weather at the destination rather than the weather in Detroit. Atlanta was currently allowing flights to land, but that could change at any moment. I got a brief amount of sleep sitting up in the Detroit airport. Not quality sleep by any means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I waited to see if my flight would take off, I called Cherokee and inquired if by any chance they would have a driver in Atlanta near the time I was supposed to arrive? No such luck. It\u2019s a three-hour drive from Cherokee to Atlanta — in dry weather — and their only drivers were booked elsewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bonnie was traveling separately from Vegas to Asheville, North Carolina. Originally, I was going to fly from Newark and meet her there. A car from Cherokee would transport us both to the property. But now, I was flying to Atlanta, some 200 miles away from Asheville. I haven\u2019t traveled the road between these two cities before, but I know it\u2019s not all flat driving. The elevation at the high point on that route exceeds 3,400 feet — which is plenty high enough to be snowy and\/or icy in the current conditions. Driving from Atlanta to Asheville was going to be out for me — I was too tired for a three-hour road trip in a car I wasn\u2019t used to in bad weather. I\u2019d concentrate on getting to Cherokee and let the casino driver pick her up and bring her to me. Bonnie and I both know the driver, Chris, who was scheduled to pick her up and that wouldn\u2019t be a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Renting a car in Atlanta was going to be an issue. There were cars to be had, but nowhere close to Cherokee to drop them off. Enterprise has a location relatively close to Cherokee, but the Enterprise rental location within the Atlanta airport was closed for the day. The cars I could get would have to be dropped off in Asheville — a full 60 miles away from Cherokee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The plane did take off from Detroit and land in Atlanta uneventfully — and the passengers on the plane gave out a heartful cheer. I checked my messages and found out that Bonnie\u2019s plane to Asheville had been cancelled. I texted this information to Chris so he wouldn\u2019t drive out there for nought. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I checked Lyft and found out that I could get to Cherokee for $320 from Atlanta. I decided this was better than driving in icy conditions to Cherokee when I was sleep deprived and in a car I wasn\u2019t used to — and then dealing with getting to and from Asheville to return the car. Before I ordered the Lyft car, I checked Uber and found out the ride cost $260 — and if I was willing to share a ride, $165. Yes, I was willing. I hoped whomever I shared with didn\u2019t mind my snoring. Not for the first time, I was amazed that the rates varied so much between these two companies that offered essentially identical service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turned out that I paid the \u201cshare\u201d rate, but there were no other passengers. Sometimes you catch a break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I arrived in Cherokee and checked in. I was more tired than I was hungry, so I immediately went to bed. My plan was to awaken at 2 a.m. and play $50,000 coin-in before the casino day changed at 6 a.m., earning me 5,000 Tier Credits and the maximum daily bonus of 10,000 TCs. I can redeem one Experience Credit (requiring 250,000 TCs) for $450 in free play, so earning some extra TCs would be worth money to me to obtain. But when my alarm rang, I turned it off, rolled over, and slept longer. I was worn out by both the lack of sleep and the stress of not knowing how I was going to cope with my transportation problems caused by weather conditions that were both serious and uncertain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had my toothbrush and toothpaste, but no other toiletries. I\u2019d flown into Newark for a day with just a backpack — and my clothes and things were in a suitcase Bonnie was bringing. With the weather, she ended up getting here Thursday night — four days later than originally planned. I wore the same clothes day after day, washing out my underwear nightly. The handheld hair dryer became a clothes dryer. When Bonnie finally saw me, she laughed at how scruffy I had become. But we were together again, clean clothes were at hand, and everything was okay in our world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A significant part of the country experienced colder than usual weather starting January 25 and lasting for a while. While Las Vegas escaped most of the cold weather, January 25 was a day I was scheduled to fly from Newark, NJ to Asheville, NC to begin an 11-day Cherokee trip. Both airports were snowed in, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":843442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[558,557],"tags":[561,585],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/spinach-2.png?fit=500%2C300&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906859"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":906860,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906859\/revisions\/906860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}