Traveling to Tucson Again

Originally I had a reservation on Southwest for Wednesday evening, the TV pics from Lindbergh totally horrified me plus no way could I get packed and ready in time to leave to get to the airport three hours before flight time (and possibly still miss the flight), so I cancelled my SW rez and decided to go by dog – Greyhound – again. In the past I've traveled by dog at least once in each direction and found it relatively relaxing. In addition, this time I saved close to $60 by taking the low road rather than the high skies!

Here's my chronology:

Friday evening I arrived at the downtown San Diego Gr*yh**nd Station (notice that as a cat person, I'm using a convention of treating dog stuff as an *obsc*n*ty). Talk about security—none whatsoever! I'd made my reservation online and paid for it with a credit card. I gave the reservation # to the clerk, and asked if he needed the actual credit card or my ID, but he said no, although my ticket had my name all over it. So I sauntered to the line of folks waiting to board at gate 6.

As we traveled through the dark night, the blanket of stars in the sky was wondrous; for a long time we traveled alongside the Big Dipper:



I need to quote one of my favorite old-time groups, Spanky and Our Gang's

Lazy Day

Blue sky, sunshine
What a day to take a walk in the park
Ice cream, daydream
Till the sky becomes a blanket of stars
What a day for a picnic
Daisies and lots of red balloons
And what a day for holdin' hands
And bein' with you

However, it wasn't any day for any picnic!

Midway through the journey, the border patrol (USBP) always storms on the bus, checks papers, asks country of citizenship, and this time they called very blonde and Anglo-appearing) "Melissa Thompson" off the bus regarding some concern, though she re-boarded and continued through to Tucson.

When I used to go to Tucson on Southwest's now-nonexistent late afternoon flight out of San Diego, flying into the Southwester sunset was a supreme treat, esp since Tucson is an astronomer's Dark Sky area. Yesterday's sunrise was pretty special though, bringing up memories of getting into Prescott AZ around the same time of day, also during the winter.

We left Phoenix a half-hour late, at 9:30, and on a Harrah's casino bus rather than Greyhound equipment! Funny, esp given my feelings about casinos.
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