Travel Day

While it might be 7:30 back home, it's only 4:30 where I am which is in Phoenix, Arizona. So that means that for the next week, the blog is going to be late!!!

I really tried to go to bed late last night so that I would wake up late. I was still awake at 3 AM. I've been luxuriating in the fact that I don't really have anything to do this morning (well - I have a bit of hand sewing) but I'm just taking it super easy. I don't have a roommate so I can do whatever I want.

As far as travel days go, yesterday was a pretty quiet day. I got to the airport with time to spare as I did NOT want to miss that flight. There's ONE direct flight per day to Phoenix. The bag tag and drop off process went smoothly with NO human intervention required from the airline staff. Isn't that just the weirdest??  Got into line for security which took slightly longer than normal - there seemed to be a jam up in the security machine, however, thank god for the Trusted Traveler line as it was significantly shorter than the regular line.

Then onto the customs area which again is pretty much automatic. The machine didn't even give a hoot that the photo of me taken by the camera was totally unclear - I swear it didn't even do the retina check. One of my fingerprints didn't really register and yet, I was able to walk right through. What the heck is that all about????  And why does the customs guy ask if I have checked luggage?? That's a common thing and I always wondered why? I don't think I've ever had checked luggage coming into the US and I was a tad worried, but he just wanted to confirm that I had luggage.

I met up with my colleagues and we had lunch near our gate. Here's my inexperience in travel. I didn't pay attention to the fact that we were flying Rouge which is one of the airlines run by Air Canada. The flight attendants had different uniforms than what I was used to. I asked - Oh - this is Rouge. OK - I didn't know that. There was NO inflight entertainment. Everyone else knew that because they all had movies on their laptops or phones. I didn't even have a novel with me. I did have my audiobook, but I find that there's so much noise on the plane (airplane noise) that I can't hear well without turning the volume up too high.

I did have the book on my Galaxy s10 so I read a couple more chapters on that. Holy - I'm learning so much about cell phones. I'm going to be able to compete with the younger generations when it comes to knowledge about cell phones. It's kind of exciting actually. OK - I've gone mad. I'm finding a manual exciting??? 

Doesn't matter. Oh - I remembered that I had downloaded some quilting magazines on my iPad so I dug that out. There just wasn't a lot of room to do anything in those seats. And my elbow kept turning on the overhead light. I slept a bit. Now, how is it that when I sleep on a plane, I find my mouth hanging open. Seriously??? That's quite attractive I'm sure. Yet the young woman sitting next to me appeared to be asleep for quite a while and she didn't have her mouth hanging open once.

I did have a little incident on the plane. I should know better and next time - DO NOT let me eat chocolate on the plane. I've said - I ate some chocolate on the plane. I do from time to time indulge in chocolate. I like it. At once point, I realized that a piece of that chocolate landed in my lap and oh dear - it's melted. There was chocolate everywhere. On the seat belt, on my phone and OH MY GOD - in my lap. Well, right in my crotch to be more specific.

It looked like I'd had an accident. HELP!!!!! So I discreetly got up and went to the washroom where I tried to clean it up the best I could. Now my pants were wet.

As we were getting ready to disembark, I noticed there was still some chocolate residue on my pants, but it looked way better than it had been.

Even though I travel with a checked bag, I'm still travelling light compared to my traveling companions who each had TWO checked bags. I couldn't possibly have enough stuff to fill two bags. I don't even want to carry that much stuff around. Let's just say that we filled the Super Shuttle quite nicely with our luggage.

Luggage for FOUR people for one week

Then onto the hotel. I should say RESORT. Of course, Arizona is partially desert and it's so cool to see the cacti. What a cool place. We're staying at the Sheraton Grand at Wild Horse Pass. Check out some of the photos on their web site.

The resort is HUGE and it's gorgeous. It's also isolated. Well, isolated in that the nearest sign of civilization is about 3 KM away. Or is that in miles??? I don't remember.

Plus it's HOT. I threw stuff in my room, changed into shorts and headed out for a quick walk around the property. I love this place. There's a small patch of green grass that is labelled the Wedding Photo Lawn. We met up for dinner at 4 PM Arizona time, but late for us.

Margaret and I walked around a bit more and then everyone retired to their rooms for the evening. I went for another walk. The one thing about this place is that it looks like we are in Disney land. Everything is PERFECT. There isn't a single piece of litter or weed out of place. Fake rocks in the hotel - yep - it looks like Disney. I've taken tons of photos already.

The ceiling in the lobby

Panoramic view from the hotel lobby

I had washed my pants before I went out and left them on the balcony so they could dry in the heat. I LOVE my balcony. Of course, I turned off the air conditioner when I entered the room and left the patio door open last night so I could hear the birds and well - some other animals making weird noises. Hey - I'm on the second floor - I'm OK with that. It's fabulous and before going to bed last night, I sat on the balcony and watched the stars and the moon and just relaxed. It was beautiful.

I read a wee bit about the history of this area. It used to be inhabited by the Pima people. I did a wee bit more research and it would appear that the hotel and the surrounding lands are owned by the Gila River Indian Community and Sheraton was hired to run the resort.  I need more time to finish reading that article.

Today is a day of education stuff for us. I'm so excited about the new products that are coming down the pipeline. Can't say anything yet - but there is lots of exciting stuff coming. Some, I know about, some I know a wee bit about and some I know nothing about!!

There's a "river" that you can rent a paddleboat and go down. It's about 2 1/2 miles long and was built to represent the mighty Gila river that used to run through this area before it was diverted to a damn. But that's kind of cool, however, that isn't going to be in our future as we're now going to be hands down (in the hotel) for the next 7 days.

On that note, I'm out of here. I still have HOURS before I need to make an appearance at our first meeting. What to do? What to do???  Too dark to go for a walk.......yet.

OK - you noticed that I added some pictures of the trip. I figured if I sent them to myself on the phone and resized them while doing so that would work. But where to save them. So I recreated the folder system that I have on my computer at home. I should have done that before, I didn't want too, but there are too many neat things here not to share with you.

Have a super day.

Ciao