June 8th

Let me tell you the tale of the 8th day of June. It is a magical day. Under normal circumstances, it would be magical mainly because it is the day after the last day of school (at least for students) for both Michelle and I. But this year, the date has come to have special significance...

I have been doing a great deal of web searching for airfares to Australia and New Zealand and this is what I have discovered;

• There are very good fares available.
• These very good fares end June 8th (for departures). Depart after that date and you will pay 25-35% more, which is a deal killer for us.
• These fares are good for departures from Los Angeles, not from Minneapolis

So, as far as the potential for a trip to Australia & New Zealand is concerned, we are facing the question of whether or not it is practical to depart on the day after school lets out. There are many obvious drawbacks to this possibility, not the least of which is the fact that Michelle usually works several days after that last day of school (though she is not expected to) and that I may actually be expected to work the next few days. Add to that the general stress involved for everyone in the family at that end-of-school-year time and combine it with the stress to be expected for trip departure preparation and it may be a dangerous combination.

But it is tremendously tempting to try it. Not only is the airfare for the long distance flights quite reasonable on June 8th, but on Quantas, the Australian airline, you can also book numerous relatively short flight options for a discount in combination with the longer flights. Oddly, it doesn't matter that all of these flights would occur after June 8th. In fact, the initial flight departing from Los Angeles would depart at ... get this ... 11:50 PM on June 8th!! but no matter, it's June 8th, and non-summer high season pricing applies. Leave the next day and the same flights are $2000 more for our family. Kind of insane, isn't it?

But anyway, getting back to those multiple flights, here is one example (of at least a dozen possibilities) that I like because it allows us to avoid backtracking on the ground and puts the farthest south locations (where it would be coldest) earlier in the trip, before their winter really kicks in;

• June 8th; Fly LA to Auckland, NZ (on the northern part of the northern island), recover from jet lag and see a bit of NZ's largest city.
• June 12th; Fly to Christchurch, NZ (midway down the southern island) and rent a car. Spend 12 days meandering about 1000 miles back north toward Auckland.
• June 24th; Fly from Auckland to Sydney & spend 5 nights there.
• June 29th; Fly from Sydney to tropical Cairns on the far north coast, near the Great Barrier Reef. Rent a car & stay for a week in a cottage rental there, then drive south to the Whitsunday Islands area and spend a week in a cottage rental there, then drive south to Brisbane.
• July 15th; return the car & fly to LA from Brisbane.

Those three additional flights allow us to cover a great deal of territory very efficiently and only add about $150/person extra to the cost of the two long flights. That's an amazing bargain.

What's that you say? Yes, I know we don't live in Los Angeles. This whole scenario also depends on getting a separate (hopefully cheap) flight to LA to take advantage of the discount options available there. Don't worry, I've taken all that into account. The whole thing would still cost more than we have ever spent on airfare for any trip, just not obscenely more...

...like it would if we tried to do exactly the same thing departing 15 minutes later...

...on June 9th.