Back in the U.S

Saturday, June 19th was the longest day of the year.  For Grace and me, it was also the longest day of travel....25 3/4 hours.  We set 3 alarms, each 15 minutes apart beginning at 3:30AM, to wake us..  We did not hear the first alarm.  The second, the hotel's telephone wake-up call woke us from a deep sleep at 3:45AM.   We got showered, packed and headed down to the lobby to catch a taxi to the airport for our 6:30AM flight on British Midlands Airline from Edinburgh to London.  Wretched time of the morning to get up.

4:30AM - In spite of the ungodly hour, we reveled in seeing our first Scottish sunrise.

Once at London Heathrow airport, we grabbed a quick bite to eat, did a little duty-free shopping to waste our 3+ hour layover, before realizing that we were in the wrong terminal to catch our Virgin Atlantic flight at 11:50AM.  We were in Terminal 1.  Virgin flies out of Terminal 3.  After several long walks down wrong corridors, we knocked on the door of an office (information desks were no where to be found) to ask directions.  The gentlemen thought at first that we were in distress, but once he found that we were merely lost Americans, he gently pointed us in the right direction.  Once we got into Terminal 3, we found out that we still had to check in with the boarding agent to ensure that our transferred bags would actually be transferred from BMI to Virgin.  I suppose this is a security measure, but seemed crazy to us, AND hampered our duty-free shopping, which by the way requires you show your boarding pass.  Heaven forbid that you somehow snuck into the airport, got through 3 security check points and bought something duty-free, thereby saving a pound or two.

11:50AM Virgin Atlantic flight #007 took off.  The 56mph head wind added some time on our flight.  12 hours to go. 

Some of you might know that while in Nairn, I slipped on the stairs and severely bruised myself.  The general location of the bruising is my sit-upon part.  So, it was with great fear that I settled down for 12 hours of sitting in an airline seat designed for a person half my size.  The first 3 hours were a great challenge, but I finally managed with both airline pillows tucked beneath me.

We landed at LAX about 3:20PM PST, retrieved our luggage, passed through customs and made our way over to Hertz to pick up our rental car.  The 3.5 hour drive from LAX to Fresno turned into a 5 hour drive, as traffic on the 405 freeway for the first 40 miles was 0-12 mph.  We stopped in Valencia for an In N Out burger and Starbucks (our U.S. re-entry food) and managed to hit Fresno at 9:30 PM, safe and sane.   Mission accomplished.

Grace and I both had a fab trip.  We figure we have about 5-6,000 photos and  purchased 1.5 triga-byte external hard drives to store them.  Stay tuned for more photos and anecdotes about our trip.