Our flight wasn't until 4:00 p.m., so we slept in, and then Marie made us a nice breakfast. Diego was long gone for work by this time. Marie and Diego have a nice view of the mountains from their house, with lots of native plants around their yard.
Pretty plants
Mountain view
Tom, Jana and Marie
It was about a two-hour drive to the Phoenix airport. Along the way, we passed Pacacho Peak. Steve told us the other day that if you climb to the top of the peak, you can look down on Pinal Airpark, a huge scrapyard for old commercial aircraft.
Pacacho Peak
Arizona rest area
We arrived in Phoenix with what should have been plenty of time, but still almost missed our flight back to Knoxville when TSA's CT-scanner identified something in my personal item as an unknown object, and they were NOT going to let me proceed until they figured out what it was. An officer completely emptied my bag, looked at every object, and still couldn't figure it out because nothing was illicit. Then he sent my stuff back through the scanner all dumped out a bin, and FOUR officers combed through it until they finally found the offending items - three unremarkable plastic ballpoint pens. Good grief!
All that extra scrutiny took a really long time, and Tom and I were the last ones to board our flight. The gate agent actually called me and asked if we were at the airport and on our way because they were about to close the doors. Luckily, by then we were past security and only two gates away, so we just made it. Then a flight attendant scolded Tom for our not arriving at the airport two hours ahead of time. In actuality, we'd turned in our rental car two hours and 15 minutes before flight time, and it took that long to make our way to the gate. Sigh...
Anyway, all's well that ends well, and we made it home by midnight. Hooray!
Parting shot