The Time I Almost Got Stranded in Phoenix, Arizona

I’ve recently learned that when you plan to travel, you have to plan for the unexpected. Especially if it’s your first solo trip with just you and your best friend and no parents. And if the unexpected happens, do NOT freak out.

After being locked in quarantine thanks to good old COVID, I got hit with a big case of travel fever and needed to get out of New England. The last time I was on vacation was in 2018 and if I spent another minute with unpredictable weather and Dunkin Donuts coffee, I was going to lose my mind. So I called up my best friend, Alexa, and told her that she was coming on vacation with me and that I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Of course, she felt the same way I did and after some heavy convincing, our parents gave us their blessing. The next thing we knew, our plane tickets were booked and we were headed to Sedona, Arizona.

Now Sedona itself was absolutely breathtaking and once we got there, I had the time of my life. I’m planning on doing an entire post on everything we did and saw as well as how we afforded the trip as two 20-year-old broke college students, but that’s for a different day. What I want to talk about today in this post is the actual travel portion of the trip and how completely and utterly terrible it went.

Let me break down the flights for you, just so you can really understand what the plan was and how it fell apart. In order to get to Sedona, we had a five-hour flight from Boston to Phoenix, and then we had a connecting flight from Phoenix to Flagstaff that was supposed to only take us 20 minutes. 20 minutes. Keep that in mind.

So we get through security in Boston without a hitch and soon after we are on our first flight to Pheonix. Now I’m not a plane person but this flight was one of the best that I have ever taken. There was no turbulence and I got to listen to Olivia Rodrigo’s new album the entire ride so I would consider it a win. We had an hour layover so we decided to get some lunch and discuss the sunset hike we were going to take later that evening. Our morals were high.

Then came time for flight number two that was supposed to be 20 minutes. As we were waiting for takeoff the pilot comes over the loudspeaker and says that they are experiencing high winds in Flagstaff so there was going to be some turbulence. Let’s just say that “some” was the understatement of the century. Remember when I said I wasn’t a plane person? This flight solidified that for me. I have never felt turbulence like I have during this flight in my life. You know the rides that they have at carnivals where you’re strapped in and they raise you up a couple of 100 feet and then just drop you? That’s what this flight felt like the entire time except instead of a giant metal piece strapping me in, I got a little piece of fabric around my lap.

That 20-minute flight turned into an hour flight but finally, we were about to land. The pilot begins his descent and just as he’s about to touch down on the runway, he pulls back at the last second and goes back up into the air, and turns around. About 30 seconds later he comes on the loudspeaker and says that the winds are so bad, he cannot land the plane and not only are we headed back to Phoenix, but our flight is also canceled. (I later found out from a flight attendant at the Flagstaff airport that we were flying through 75 MPH winds that knocked the power out of their entire airport.)

So now we are stranded by ourselves in Phoenix with no other flights to Flagstaff for the rest of the day. Of course, we weren’t old enough to rent a car and it was a two-hour drive to our hotel in Sedona which meant that ubers were close to $400. I called my mom explaining the situation and needless to say, she was freaking out. My cousin who works for JetBlue was trying to find us more flights but the only one he could find was for 3 p.m. the next day. Considering we were only there for three days, it wasn’t ideal but at this point, we really had no choice so our moms found us a hotel room about five minutes from the airport and caught an uber over.

As we walk up to the hotel front desk with our spirits crushed, I mention to Alexa that at least we can lounge at the pool and maybe go to dinner later in the evening. I’m trying to stay positive because, on the bright side, we have a place to stay for the night. I greet the front desk person and show them my reservation confirmation. She types our number into the computer and a strange look comes across her face. She then looks back at me and says,

“So I’m not sure why the website allowed you to book through us but we currently have no rooms available. We are unfortunately going to have to cancel your reservation.”

When I tell you my stomach dropped to my feet, I’m not kidding. It was currently 4 p.m. and we had no place to stay, no car, and no idea what we were going to do. I started asking if there were any other open hotel rooms but was told that every hotel in the area was booked for the night. We decided to take a seat in the lobby and regroup and try and figure out what our next move was going to be.

Once again I called my mom (because that’s what a terrified 20-year-old stranded alone in a totally different state does) and asked her what she thought we should do. She told us to check uber and see what came up. Desperate, I opened the app and typed in our destination praying for a reasonably priced car. Finally, I found a car that would take us to Sedona for $150. While that’s literally so expensive for an uber, our refunded plane tickets would cover it and it would mean we would get there tonight. I booked it without even confirming with Alexa and by some miracle of the universe, a driver (James) accepted our ride and drove us two hours from Flagstaff to Sedona. I genuinely do not know how we got someone who was willing to drive that far to drop us off but he was such a genuine and kind human being and you better believe he got an amazing tip from us afterward.

So after we finally got to our hotel and had an amazing trip, it was time to go home. And to be honest, getting home was arguably worse than getting there.

For our flight home, we planned to fly out of Flagstaff to Dallas, and then we had another flight from Dallas to Boston. We get to the Flagstaff airport (which is the size of my pinkie finger) and are waiting in the one (1) terminal that it has for American Airlines when I get a notification from my flying app that our flight has been delayed an hour. I check my tickets and I see that my flight would now be getting in at 2 p.m. and my connecting flight wouldn’t take off until 4:30 p.m. I was in a momentary state of calm and bliss until I realized that time zone differences were a thing and that landing at 2 p.m. Arizona time meant landing at 4 p.m. Dallas time. This meant that we would have 30 minutes to get from Terminal E to Terminal A.

Now, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal if the terminals were right next to each other. However because it’s me and everything in my life has to be one big giant ordeal, the Dallas airport is so big that it has its own zip code. That being said, in order to get to my new terminal, we had to take a sky train across the airport. So I called my mom and just let her know that I might not be home for dinner and then started mentally preparing to have to do a mile sprint in Texas heat. I wish I got a video of Alexa and me zooming through the Dallas airport because she’s on her college’s track team and I’m pretty speedy when my adrenaline is pumping so I just KNOW we looked like a hot sweaty mess.

Once again I don’t know who was looking out for me up there but we got on that plane with five minutes to spare and needless to say our parents and ourselves were over the moon relieved. Now the only thing we had to do was grab our luggage from the baggage claim and head home.

… Oh you thought it was over? Yeah, I wish. You see, while we made it home, our luggage was actually still in Dallas because it didn’t make it to the flight on time. So now I’m home with only my carry-on backpack and hydroflask. Luckily our bags did end up getting delivered to our house the next day so I can’t really complain too much about that.

While it definitely sucked in the moment, I try to look at this whole experience as something I can laugh at and learn from. Not everything is going to be smooth sailing when you travel and sometimes you have to expect the unexpected and prepare for it. After this trip, I honestly don’t know if my mom will ever let me travel alone again but I definitely plan on going on another girls trip this summer, hopefully, the flights just go a little smoother this time!

Thanks so much for reading! I hope you have a lovely week!

- Meg

P.S. Below are some photos from that very eventful first travel day! The first one is Alexa and I right before our second flight took off, the second is the view from the second flight before turbulence hit, and the third was taken about an hour and a half into our two hour Uber ride to the hotel.