09 DEC 2018

The start of the trip, which took about 8 hours to complete. We left Hayward, WI at 11:30pm on 08 DEC 2018 to ensure we had enough time to make the 3.5 hour trip to the airport. Our flight left at 5:30am on 09 DEC 2018, but we arrived at the airport at approximately 2:45am. Unfortunately, the baggage check-in for Delta flights did not open until 4:00am, so we ended up waiting in the lobby of the airport for about an hour. After the baggage check-in opened, we checked our bags and started towards our departure gate. The flight to our layover in Atlanta, GA was very easy, with almost no areas of turbulence - the flight took us about 2.5 hours to complete.
Unfortunately, none of us had ever been to the Atlanta airport before, so we had trouble navigating our way around the large airport. We accidentally left the secure area and had to go through the security checkpoint again. This took a great deal of time, and we already had very little time to make it from one end of the airport (where our flight landed) to the other end (where our flight to San Jose would be leaving). We missed our flight by about 5 minutes. After talking on the phone with Delta representatives for a few hours, we finally managed to get a new flight for the following morning. We stayed in the Crowne Plaza (airport hotel) in Atlanta for the night. Since we were awake for so long the night before, it was almost a relief to have missed our flight, we were able to catch up on some much needed sleep!

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