HOME IN THE USA

Thursday, May 31, 2012

We arrived home about 11 pm last night.  A very long day if you start at 6 am in Paris and remember to add the nine hours difference making a total of twenty-six hours we were awake with only a nap here and there.

The first flight was ten hours to Dallas, Texas; long but uneventful.  It was daylight for the whole trip and everyone stays awake for the most part.  I do try to do some exercises every hour to keep from getting too stiff.

The fun began when we landed in Dallas.  There had been a bad thunderstorm all day to the point that they actually shut down the airport for an hour in the afternoon.  It was open when we arrived but everything was really backed up.  It took an hour and a half to get through customs; about three times the normal!   When we arrived I turned on my cell phone while still in the airplane and it worked.  The battery had held a full charge for two months!  I called my sister who was tracking our flight and she told me that our connecting flight had been canceled because of the storms.  While we were still processing through customs inspections I was able to talk with airline staff and they said that they’d already switched us to another later flight for Los Angeles; I asked about Orange County and because of all the delays he was able to get us on a flight that had been scheduled to leave at 5 pm but was delayed until 7 pm.  

We were thrilled with the change as it cut our travel time from the airport to home in half!  We eventually had to wait until 8:30 pm before the flight finally got off the ground.  The airport was a mess because so many flights were canceled and/or late because of the storms.  Once we were in the air I could see the clouds in a distance where the lightening was flashing in huge strikes one after another…so fast it was like daylight!  But, we were far enough away so that other than a few bumps we were fine.  We arrived safely in California after a three hour flight.

By 11 pm we were home and tucked into bed…left the luggage in the car!  We slept through until 6 am so we should be just fine as far as jet lags goes.  We did take our “No Jet Lag” pills all the way home.  It’s been a busy day with laundry, paying bills and getting back in the grove after being gone two months.  Thanks again for sharing our journey.  I’m going to take a vacation from blogging for awhile but hope you find time to go back through some of my earlier post to read about other trips we’ve taken.