A long overdue Bucket List entry has been to travel to New England during the autumn to see the fall colors that are noted for being some of the best in the world, and articles I have read say that being there around Columbus Day (October 8) is usually peak color time. I had some deposit money on hold from a previously cancelled tour that prompted me to sign up for the 8 day Insight Vacations “New England Spectacular Fall Foliage”.

Normally we would fly in a day early to let our bodies adjust but since this is simply a jaunt to the East Coast we chose to fly in the same day. The bad news is because it is to the East Coast our flight to Boston leaves Seattle at the ungodly hour of 6:40 AM so we chose to spend the night near the airport to ease the pain of the early morning.  It will be further eased as we were upgraded to first class on our Alaska Airline flight (probably not a good idea as Yvonne might get too used to riding “up front” all the time).

Up at 4AM, delivered the car to our usual parking lot,  rode the shuttle to the airport, checked luggage and passed through security by 5AM!  We could have slept longer, but one never knows how busy the airport might be, even at this early hour.  Surprisingly there was a lot of traffic on the road-where are all these people going at 4:30 AM? The airport, however, was fairly quiet-a pleasant alternative to some of our past trips.

Our plane left on time and they fed us a nice breakfast- with real silverware, coffee cups and plates!  Flight time to Boston was about 4.5 hours and we arrived to Seattle weather- dreary skies and drizzle. Luggage arrived quickly-Alaska airlines prides itself on rapid luggage delivery. If it takes longer than 20 minutes they will give you a voucher for a future discount or additional frequent flyer miles. I do not recall ever collecting on that promise and today was no exception.

Insight Vacations provided us with a prepaid taxi voucher to take us to our hotel, something we have not experienced before and was certainly a nice touch. After checking in we met our tour director for the trip, Gary Blender, who gave us luggage and name tags and reminding us that a dinner reception was scheduled for 6PM this evening.

At dinner we learned that there were only 32 people (normally there would be 40) because of some last minute cancellations. Most are Americans and surprisingly there are no Australians or New Zealanders, which is very unusual as they are world travelers and we always seem to have some on any trip we have taken.  There are about 8 people from Great Britain. There is a large group (17) from the Tampa area who call themselves the “owls” which we soon learned stood for “older, wiser, livelier seniors”.  I like that! Gary briefed us on the upcoming trip and gave us detailed instructions for tomorrow- breakfast begins at 6:30AM, luggage available INSIDE the room (usually we have to put it in the hallway) at 7 AM and the bus leaves at 8 AM. He assures us there will be enough fall colors for us to enjoy.

So off we go on our next adventure.