| Date | Airline | Flight | Type | Regn | Routing | Time | Miles | Remarks | ||
| Back | 14 Mar 20 | DL | 1163 | A321-211(WL) | N337DN | PHX-MSP | 02:21 | 1318 mi | Next |
With the developing Coronavirus / COVID-19 pandemic upon us, I decided to book a roundtrip flight to Minneapolis St. Paul with the hopes of logging my 757th flight by flying aboard a Delta 757 on my return flight to Phoenix.
Fares were decent so I booked the roundtrip for the coming weekend. On the Wednesday I asked my sister in Utah if she wanted to join me; all she'd have to do is get to Las Vegas airport and I'd take care of the airfare. She readily agreed so I booked her flights for her. We'd both arrive within a short time of each other around 630am.
After my arrival I greeted her flight from LAS. She flew in on a 737-900ER. We casually strolled to the rental car facility and I picked a Nissan Frontier light truck for the day...same vehicle type I had four weeks prior during my Moses Lake, WA trip.
This was going to be my first time ever outside the MSP airport and exploring the local area. Indeed, I'd only ever been to MSP on one other occasion - back in 2018 during a plane change - so this was all new territory for me.
We exited the airport, found the Mall of America and had breakfast at the IHOP across the street from the mall. It was still before 8am and still fairly dark due to the thick cloud cover. MSP weather was due to improve through the day so I was hopeful for some good photography weather.
During the morning I wanted to find train-watching locations. After finding our hotel (but not checking in) I found the Amtrak station in Saint Paul with the eastbound train getting ready to depart. I sorted out a hopeful location and found a local railfan who confirmed the Amtrak would be passing by soon. He gave me some tips on other train-watching locations in the local area, which we did explore.
After a couple of hours watching trains, it was time to visit the Mall of America. Until just a few days ago I didn't realize this mall was so close to the MSP airport. I have to thank co-worker Jeff for even bringing the mall up in the first place as I probably wouldn't have researched it. Big sister was curious to check it out too, so off we went to the mall. My main goal was the Lego store and after visiting that we wandered around for a bit then grabbed some lunch in the mall.
After lunch, I wanted to go find some more trains, which we did. The sky was improving for photos and by 2pm or so I wanted to get back to the airport to take advantage of the sunlight and do some plane watching / photography. I found out there is a plane-watching "park" in the middle of the airport so we headed for that. It turned out to be a great location and we spent the rest of the daylight (7pm) in the park.
We found a Taco Bell for a quick easy dinner and made our way to the hotel. I crashed on the bed while sister showered and I woke up at midnight to set the alarm for 3am. We needed to be to the airport by 5am or so and had to gas up and return the rental in the meantime. It all worked out and we were able to check my suitcase (filled with diapers and baby wipes sourced from a local Walmart) in for the return flight to PHX.
Below is my photo of N337DN at PHX prior to my red-eye flight to MSP.
Flight Aware screenshot of this flight from Phoenix to MSP:
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