Our Trip

An unusual color for a hibiscus, I thought.

I think I'll try to write a day-by-day account of our trip. Maybe it'll stay forever in my mind that way. I used to read the author, Peg Bracken a lot-she wrote many books, "I Hate to Cook Book," "I Hate to Housekeep Book," "I try to Behave Myself," for instance, and wrote newspaper and magazine columns for many years. Her best advice for life was, "If you come into a bit of money, be sure to spend it on something permanent like a trip and not on something temporary like a car or refrigerator. I strive to live my life that way. Do what's important.

Wednesday: we left here, stopped in Belgrade, picked up Grandma, and drove to Billings. We always fly from Billings-it's cheaper and we would be meeting Irene there anyway. It crossed my mind to ask if Gram had her passport with her, but I didn't want to treat her like a child, and besides didn't Norma pack for her? We pulled up in front of the restaurant that evening and I popped up with, "Gram do you have your passport?" No, she didn't. Oh my, I'm sure glad we found out when we did. Niece Shannon to the rescue-she drove to Big Timber and Norma met her there with the passport. Whew!

We left Thursday morning, taking advantage of the low rates on a nifty new airline called Allegiant Air. Keep in mind if you fly with them that they don't like to be late so be sure you're at the gate in plenty of time. Hubs was in the men's room and almost got left. I talked a custodian into calling him out, otherwise Lord knows where we'd have met up with him! We landed in Phoenix, expecting to go to another gate to catch our AeroMexico flight. Uh, oh! Allegiant flies in and out of Phoenix/Mesa airport, not Phoenix Sky Harbor! After a $70 taxi ride, we found our flight and continued to Mazatlan.

The plane change in Hermasillo was interesting. We had to go through Immigration there, but they also had us fill out forms swearing we weren't sick and they took our temperatures. I was hoping that a hot flash didn't count as a fever! I was a bit nervous, because we only had 55 minutes between flights, but they waited for us-oh yeah this is Mexico! We took off in the biggest dust storm I've ever seen.

When we landed in Mazatlan, we had to fill out the same form and had our temperatures taken again. They used a kind of gun to do this both times. There were posters all over with instructions on how to properly wash your hands. We caught our shuttle and went "home" to Torres Mazatlan, just after sunset.