June Trip to USA - Part 5

Dear Family and Friends,

The morning after Cannon's graduation, Chuck and I were up bright and early. This time our destination was Pottsboro, Texas to visit with Norman and Nancy, my brother and sister-in-law.  We had a 6:00am flight out of the Tri Cities to Oklahoma City, OK.  Why OK City?  Well, Pottsboro is located in northern Texas, very near the Oklahoma/Texas border.  Our choices were (1) Fly to Dallas and drive the freeways in Dallas traffic or (2) Fly to OK City and drive the scenic back roads to northern Texas.  We chose option (2) mainly because living in Ecuador, we are not used to driving on interstate highways.

We had a very nice visit with Norman and Nancy.  When we arrived on Saturday afternoon Nancy and I went to get catfish to go for our dinner.  Yum, yum what a treat.  

On Sunday Nancy's step mom, Amelia came to have lunch with us.  Nancy made seafood gumbo.  Amelia brought key lime pie.  

While we were there we decided to have a family vacation this coming January.  We got our sister, Mary Anne, on the phone and schemed up a cruise of the western Caribbean.  This has been something we have wanted to do as a family and now is the time.

We had all day Sunday together. Our original plans were to stay over Monday night and leave Tuesday morning to drive back to OK City for our flight to Tucson.  Again, Delta had other plans.  They canceled our Tuesday afternoon flight and rescheduled us on a early Tuesday morning flight.  This cut our trip short, we had to leave on Monday in order to get back to OK City and stay in a hotel near the airport so we could return our rental car and make our 8:00am flight.  

It was hot in Texas and knowing we were flying to Tucson, AZ, Chuck thought he would be more comfortable dressed for the hotter weather ahead.

For some reason I had a desire to sit across from him while waiting to board at the gate in OK City instead of beside him.  

When we arrived in Tucson, Audrey and Jim picked us up at the airport.  We stopped at our favorite Mexican restaurant on the way home.

We had one week in Tucson before returning to Ecuador.  Chuck spent time at local nurseries deciding on what plants to plant at our AZ house.  Audrey and I spent time shopping.  The best thing about our trip was getting together with our Ecuador expat friends, Bruce and Charlie as well as Clarke and Brenda.  

Here are more pictures so you can see how well they are doing.

Bruce and Chuck checking out their menus.

Here is Brenda with Audrey, Jim is checking out his menu behind Audrey.

Sitting across from me is Charlie.

and good looking Clarke.

We enjoyed a nice dinner together in historic Tucson.  

It was so nice to see these folks.  Charlie and Bruce came from Phoenix and Clarke and Brenda drove up from Green Valley.  When we get back to Tucson, whenever that is, if you want to join us in a Expat reunion email me.  This way everyone can have months ahead to make plans.  In my opinion it would be better to get together in the fall/winter so we can have good weather.

Our week in Tucson went by extremally fast.  Audrey and Jim drove us back to the airport for us to return to Ecuador.  Of course, on the way, we had to go to the Sushi Garden Restaurant.

We stayed at a hotel near the airport.  Our 6 am flight got us to Atlanta in plenty of time for our flight to Quito.  This time we were happy that there was not a flight cancellation.  

We arrived in Quito on Wednesday evening and spent the night in the Wyndham across from the airport. On Thursday morning we flew from Quito, back home to Cuenca.   I took this photo just before we reached Cuenca.  

It feels so good to be back home again.  We had a wonderful trip and are so thankful we were able to do as much as we did in such a short span of time.  

We had to do it this way because we have tickets to fly out of Quito this Saturday to Amsterdam.  We needed this week to prepare for the coming trip.

I will tell you about the tough times we are going through in Cuenca on my next post.

Love,

Nancy