Our Bright* and Early Morning SEA-DEN-YEG

*Actually, early but not so bright.

Our 5:46 a.m. flight to Denver required us at to arrive at the airport mighty early. We had to check a bag and spent a precious few minutes trying to get some assistance when the "bag check" machine refused to do business with us. The clock was ticking toward the cutoff time for the flight.

Still, it turned out to be good news. Our upgrades cleared at some point between yesterday afternoon and this morning and the agent printed out new boarding passes, allowing us to enjoy a hot breakfast on the 757 along with our coffee and orange juice.

The flight was smooth and arrived early so we've camped out in the nearest RCC and will head to the Edmonton flight in another hour. We're already upgraded on the EMB 170 (our first time in First on the 70-passenger Embraer) so United's new Unlimited Domestic Upgrades scheme is working out well for us so far. Another reason to stay on the 1K marathon awhile longer.

Update: A lovely flight on that Embraer. Row 1 C-D has a huge amount of legroom, ironically much more than the same seats on the 757. Seat Guru is just plane wrong! Despite the 80 knot headwind most of the way (according to the friendly pilot), we landed in good time, zipped through Immigration and Customs, picked up our rental car (a pleasant Nissan Sentra that oddly enough doesn't have cruise control), and arrived at the Holiday Inn Express West Edmonton about 35 minutes after leaving the airport. The hotel exceeds our expectations on first glance, being quite new and modern, and now it's time to find out where the action is, at least action suitable for us.