A visit to Southern Utah

Greg and I took a quick trip to Southern Utah this past week to help Mom and Dad with a few projects. We flew into Vegas on Thursday and then rented a car and drove to Toquerville. It was a good visit. Greg helped fix a rain gutter, a leaky pipe on the pasture, and rebuild Mom & Dad’s back stairs—along with a couple of other small projects. We also went up onto the mountain and had dinner at the trailer. That was a lot of fun. It was a cool, beautiful evening. I do really miss the mountains!

Coming home was a challenge. All the flights from Vegas were full and I wasn’t sure we were going to make it home yesterday. I thought I had figured out a way, but it meant flying Delta to Atlanta and then Atlanta to Houston. Not the most appealing trip, but since we were trying to avoid our rental car almost doubling in cost as well as trying to get Greg home so he could work on Tuesday we headed to Vegas. When we got to the Continental desk to buy our passes on Delta, the agent talked us out of our planned route. First she suggested flying Southwest Airlines into Hobby, but since our car was at IAH, we wanted to try to avoid that. She then suggested trying US air through Phoenix instead. This had been our original plan, but when I called US earlier that morning they told me their flights were mostly full. But since the Continental agent suggested this route, I decided things must have change. So we bought our passes and then went over to the US Air desk to work out our reservation. After winding through a very long line, we learned that things had changed on the US Air flights. Unfortunately, they had gotten worse. But this agent suggested we go try Southwest because they had just started accepting the type of employee passes we had. What did we have to lose—other than spending the night in Vegas? We walked down to the SWA desk, only to discover another very long line. Luckily they had a small counter to the side to help people who weren’t checking bags. So we went to that desk and very quickly had tickets to Phoenix on a flight that was wide open. Since the Continental flight from Phoenix to Houston was also wide open, we were thrilled because we knew we were actually going to make it home. So we learned two important standby lessons on this trip. Never try to fly out of Vegas on a Monday, and Southwest is a viable partner to fly on (something I had never considered before). I wonder how long it will take me to understand this system completely?