So, we didn’t make the flight to Rota. Talk about a big let down. Seriously regretting not staying in Memphis and taking up that offer of a guaranteed flight to Rota out of Memphis on Sunday right now! In the 90 minutes we were in the air coming from Memphis, they had reduced the amount of seats headed to Rota from 53 to 20… but they added another flight to Germany… but that one also only had 20 seats available. Remember what I said about category priorities? Retirees are Cat 6… the low man on the totem pole. We never had a chance. When we arrived at the terminal from the tarmac, the airport was so crowed with families all trying to get back to Germany, we knew we weren’t getting on that flight.

Roll call is held three hours before the flight actually takes off and a good rule of thumb is to hang around until the plane actually departs in case they are able to add more seats.

No such luck.

We’re stuck in Dover and it looks like we may be here for the weekend. The only flights leaving Saturday are to Wright-Patterson AFB and Turkey. And Sunday’s flights are all conus bound. By 9 p.m., all the disappointed and once hopeful travelers had departed and there was just a handful of folks left in the building… us included. Nothing was going out for the rest of the night, so I called around looking for a hotel room for the night but had no luck. The base inn was full, and the local hotels, knowing that there’s always stranded Space A travelers, jack up the prices of their rooms on the weekend. Rooms that normally go for $88 a night, were going for $169 last night.

Oh, hell no!

So… we have to stayed the night in the airport. But before we can even try to sleep, we need to find some food because we’ve spent the day in airports without a good meal and we’re hungry. We discovered the base dining facility offers a night meal from 11pm to 1am, so that’s were we decide to go. It’s about a mile away and I’m be damn, it seems like my backpack has increased in weight. But we made it and had a good, albeit, cold meal, but it hit the spotWe make it back to the terminal about 12:30am and are both really tired. We’re thankful the terminal stays open 24/7 so we had a place to stay. It wasn’t a comfortable night at all, but it was free and according to my Fitbit, I did manage to get four hours of sleep. Poor Steven didn’t get probably more than an hour.

Because nothing was headed to Europe for the rest of the weekend, or Monday it looks like we’re stuck here until at least Tuesday. So, I tried the base inn again and was able to book a room for the night for $70. At least we’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep and a shower tonight!