Home!

We arrived back at Gracie by about 2pm today (Monday), driving in from Albuquerque.

We spent a rather restless night (not helped by the fact that Miss Kitty was bouncing all around the room seemingly all night long!)... but, as we were getting ready to leave the room and opened the shades...

We saw a hot air balloon rising up in the sky (you probably cannot see it in this picture...)...

... zoomed in - you can see two balloons...

Then there were more!

Eventually there were 17 up at the same time. We don't know whether it was something special going on or not!

The Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta is in October every year (except it was cancelled in 2020) -- my understanding is one reason that Albuquerque is such a great balloon location is because the winds can be in different directions at different altitudes so it is possible to fly a square and end up exactly where you took off.

It was a better day for driving (Sunday was very windy), and we saw some beautiful scenery on our way back to Mesa.

Snow capped peaks in New Mexico -- we had run into snow flurries as we were driving into Albuquerque on Sunday night.

Another view of snow capped peaks in New Mexico

Beautiful views as we came through the mountains north of Mesa, between Heber-Overgaard and Peyson, AZ

Beautiful views from our patio outside Gracie this evening!

We are very thankful to be home!

Regarding traveling by car with a cat: I used to tell people that Dwayne and I knew we wanted to travel, and we had cats, and traveling by car and staying in hotels with cats is just not pleasant... they tend to get very energized by all the smells and differences in the hotel room and so the first night in any hotel is pretty restless for all involved. My brother told me *not* to say that we purchased a motorhome for our cats, but... well... to some extent we did!

I had forgotten how bad it could be! Honestly, on the trip up to Indiana, it wasn't too bad, Miss Kitty settled down pretty well in each room, and she really settled in to the Residence Inn in Carmel. On the way up, the first night in Amarillo, she had found that she could hide between the head of the bed and the wall, so we had to move the mattress and box springs to be able to get her out, but that was it. 

Coming home, the first night in Joplin wasn't too bad, except in the early morning, we realized we didn't know where she was. We were in a room with two queen beds, and there was room between the base of the bed and the wall in the one that we were not using, but when I used a flashlight to check, I didn't see her. When she would cry, however, we knew she was somewhere under that bed. As I checked more carefully, I realized that the bottom fabric cover on the box springs was not connected securely and that she could have gotten into the insides of the box springs... uh oh... We figured we'd wait a little while and see if she came out, and, with a few more "Meow"s, we heard a mighty scrambling (like she was caught in a tight spot and clawing her way through) and suddenly she hopped up on the bed with us. There were a few loose tufts of hair -- I don't know whether she cleaned out hair from another cat that had been in there or whether the tufts were from her...

Last night, in Albuquerque, was a different story. It was like she was on some sort of energizing drug! She seemed to be up all night long, and crying much of it (she is a great talker). If either of us opened our eyes at all, she was telling us all sorts of things. I hope she didn't not disturb any of our neighbors in the hotel, but Carl and I did not get very restful sleep. We are hopeful that both she and we will sleep much better tonight!