a bottle of Tequila/Security Item

We are back in the states! Felt great to touch down at my all time favorite airport - Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm not sure if I like the airport because it is in NM, because it is one of the few nicely decorated ones, that I am partial to the Southwestern style of decorations or that it is just a cool airport.

We had a pretty easy travel day(though still a little stressful): dinghy to shore with Jan, truck ride to the airport with Jan, plane ride to Houston, TX - we even got a decent hot sandwich as lunch when the tickets said no food on the flight! In Houston we had to go through customs in just over 1 hour with involves claiming one's bags and rechecking them. The only problem we had is that we didn't put the bottle of tequila we purchased at the duty free shop inside our checked baggage/attempted to carry it on the plane with us almost losing it at security - we did see another sign that said we could bring on bottles of alcohol that were labeled and purchased in the duty free shops but the security guy thought it said otherwise. 'Gloria' the other security person checked it as a separate 'security item' (see picture) and gave us her cell phone number and wound up catching up with us at the gate as we were boarding to give us the claim check! She was awesome!
Since we had alot of bags and they were heavy we opted to get one of those carts especially since we wanted to go to the neat Mexican restaurant at the Albuquerque airport after our flight for dinner. I felt like Harry Potter with his cart of school stuff at the train station, Scott suggested I don't try to ram it through any walls! Ha, ha.

We got a taxi to our hotel where we were redeeming a free-nights stay certificate since we had stayed at this chain alot. It was bittersweet- we started staying at these hotels because they took pets and though it was weird to be there without Hilo we felt like he was giving us a present of the free night stay.

We enjoyed hot, long, clean showers a big comfy bed and air conditioning - not that we really needed it since it was cooler and way less humid here!