Are we going to get out of here?

We’re on our way back to Guatemala and decided to stop at my time share in Mexico to spend a week (since I have to pay the blasted maintenance fees every year whether I use it or not!). So, we got to escape winter in Driggs (snow, cold, clouds, etc) for winter on the Mayan Riviera (sun, ocean breezes, green). Yippee!

But, we almost didn’t make it out of Driggs! The day before we were scheduled to leave, one of the girls had a meltdown, and while that occurrence is not completely unusual for those undergoing widely swinging hormone levels, this particular meltdown took me by surprise. Unnamed daughter was stomping around, slamming doors and responding with monosyllabic answers to our questions. Again, not completely unheard of, but when I probed about what was going on, she burst into tears and yelled, “I’m trying to be as nice as I can but I just really miss my friends and want to go see them in Boulder and I don’t want to travel!” Huh? After I recovered from my initial shock, the following thoughts were racing through my head: How could anybody NOT want to travel? Why would she rather go to grey/dreary Boulder rather than to beaches and sun and adventures? Why would a daughter of mine be having such ideas? I love to travel…shouldn’t she love it every bit as much as I do? As I bit my tongue attempting not to project all of these emotions onto her and instead asked some probing questions, I discovered that the major concern was not necessarily the travel in and of itself, but the open-ended nature of the travel. Ben and I are accustomed to traveling spontaneously, and by the nature of flying space available with his airline benefits, our travel is by necessity spontaneous and flexible. We have to wait until the last minute to check the passenger loads and make sure there will be room to carry a coupe of space available non-paying passengers. So we never have reservations and this lack of a concrete return date was troubling Miss Hunt. After some discussion, we resolved that we would not be just hanging out in Antigua for months, agreed that we would go to Mexico, then travel on to Antigua at least until after Nancy and Allison visited us in February, and re-evaluate as we go. And under no circumstances would we spend any birthday away from friends!!!

So, we headed out early Monday morning for our flight out of Jackson Hole…….where we were nearly foiled in our departure attempt once again. We’re typically pretty relaxed about checking in for flights out of Jackson since it’s such a tiny airport. So, we arrived 45 minutes before our flight only to find the airport CRAMMED with people flying out on American, United and Delta. The little security gate was overwhelmed and the gate agent fussed at us for cutting it so close. But, we sweated through the long security line and managed to board our flight without even being last on! This little adventure thoroughly bothered the other daughter so despite my best intentions, we started out the trip with both offspring slightly annoyed!