First Day of Alaska Vacation

My sister, my husband, two friends and I decided to go to Alaska.  The trip to the airport takes over an hour so we left ahead of time in case there were any delays.  Once we got to the airport, we waited 30 minutes for the Delta check in desk to open.  I wonder how long the people in front of us had been waiting.

 

When I booked the flights, I knew our layover in Seattle was just over an hour but, a month before the trip, they changed the flight time to 16 minutes later.  Knowing that that would make the connection time short, I called Delta and was reassured that we would have plenty of time.  They told me that, even if we missed our flight, there were flights every 2 hours.  I didn't like that, but they weren't willing to change our flights.  
But then our flight out of Eugene was delayed another 30 minutes.  Once in Seattle it landed at a remote site from which we had to take a bus to the actual gate!  Yep, we missed the flight to Seattle, but we were far from the only ones that the delay affected.  I heard a lot of people complaining.

Anyway, they put us on the next flight at 3:27.  Now we had time to catch a bite to eat. The plane boarded on time, backed away from the jetway and stopped for a mechanical issue. They shut the plane down for a while for maintenance. Then, after a 20-minute wait, they decided that the plane wasn't going anywhere so it pulled back to the gate, and we deplaned.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME????!!!!
A short time after we had all deplaned, they announced we were taking another plane at a different gate.  I think we went to three different concourse this day.  Anyway, we waited to board this next plane.  Once boarded at 5:10 pm, the plane went to the end of the runway, and we waited for at least 15 minutes for a break in traffic so we could actually take off.  Most of the flights I take anymore see to be either delayed or cancelled.
We had a smooth flight to Vancouver and going through Canadian Customs was quick.  We were lucky to get a taxi for all five of us. 

I'll just say the taxi ride to our downtown hotel was an adventure.  We passed by one very interesting building, but I couldn't get a photo, so I found this one.  The building is smaller at the bottom than at the top.