Be the in the know traveler and not the stuck in snow traveler!

Hey everyone, it’s Friday! Which means I am back with another blog for you all! Now I know I was slacking a little bit last month and didn’t post as much as I told you all I would but I promise I’m back and will be posting weekly.  ​So with that being said this week we are going to talk about something a little different. Yesterday when Mom was watching the news she saw a video of a Prius getting washed down the mountain in California. 

As many of you know California has been having a lot of issues with fires and now mudslides, so I wanted to talk a little bit about how important it is when you’re traveling to deal with different situations when it comes to weather. Due to me growing up in Wisconsin I definitely knew what it was like to have to drive in snow but now that we live here in Arizona I know for a fact most people will not know how to drive in snow because they don’t have it here, which can really affect drive times and safety on the roadways. I do understand the likelihood of us getting snow is very slim but it also makes me see how  a person from Arizona traveling to a place with snow can really effect how their trip goes. They are more likely to get into an accident or be unprepared for how to deal with the change in weather. I am writing about this because I don't want any of you to slide down a mountain or get hurt in an accident when everyone can be safe and prepared.

First and for most I would like to say, please if you are uncomfortable driving in certain kinds of weather get a Lyft or an Uber and just pay the money for the ride so we all know you will get from A to B. If you are in an area where there are washes, mudslides, or blizzards please watch the weather channel they will tell you whether or not it’s a safe environment to drive in. If they say if is dangerous please listen. Trust me I have learned this the hard way, luckily no one got hurt... but I did have to pay $150 to get my car towed out of a ditch. 

As some of you know I went to Wisconsin over New Year’s week (if you’d like to watch the video I posted it on our YouTube channel which is linked above.) During the week I was gone the East Coast was having a lot of issues with blizzards and huge snowstorms. So a lot of people were buying airline tickets to get to the East Coast and they were unable to get home. When I was on the bus going from Madison to Chicago O’Hare there was a gentleman who is in the military and he had to be at base at 8 o’clock that night. Unfortunately, due to the weather, his flight had been canceled and so his plan was just to sit at the airport hoping that he could get a flight home.  I don’t know what exactly happened to him but I can guess that he was unable to actually get where he was supposed to go for at least two days because they had shut down the airports in North Carolina for that time. My advice to anyone flying where there could be a blizzard or snowstorms of any kind please plan ahead and call the travel agent or the airline and see what you can do to either get an earlier flight or figure things out. Because, if you have a deadline you cannot be depending on the airlines to fix it for you.

On the other hand though when you are flying with an airline their airplanes come from all over the world so sometimes your plane is coming from somewhere there’s a snowstorm which means that if that flight was canceled  your flight will be canceled, even if you were in a place that doesn’t have any weather issues. A way to know if this will happen is to download apps like Flight Tracker or Flight Aware making you able to see where your airplane is coming from. It is super important to always be aware of the fact that transportation can cause conflict in your plans. You need to always be watching your flight, watching the weather, and please, please, please, show up early. If that means you're there a day early to make sure you can potentially catch an earlier flight do it, most airlines won’t charge you to leave early if its weather related.

I was blessed growing up I did have a travel agent as a mother so she has taught me all these things so I am always checking my flights, I’m always making sure I know where my plane is coming from and where the planes going to be but it doesn’t change the fact that it still can put me in a pickle sometimes (for those of you who know me, know I hate pickles.) My flight from O’Hare to Phoenix had been delayed, they didn’t even tell us about it until 20 minutes after we are supposed to have left. To be honest they didn't even have a screen at the gate telling us we were at the right gate. I was ahead of the game though I started questioning what was going on at 2:30 pm when we were supposed to be boarding...and the plane was yet to be at the gate. So, I pulled out my phone opened up my apps and I knew what was going on within seconds. Our flight hadn't even landed yet. I helped the other passengers know as well because most of them had no clue what was up.

Well that’s all for today, I hope you enjoyed this weeks rant. I will be back next week, if you have any topics you would like me to discuss in my  blog please leave me a comment below. Feel free to follow all of Medelberg’s Travel Services social media. All links are above.
​Thank you all I’ll talk to you next week!