Almost Home.

I love you, Sheridan, Wyoming.

I'm in my good friend Heather's guest room in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was delighted to feel moisture in the air when I got outside the airport. There wasn't a lot of that in Wyoming. My hands may never be the same!

One of my suitcases, the one with the sewing machine, has not made it to Charlotte yet. I feel too tired to be worried or upset or anything. It's just stuff. Hopefully it will be on the doorstep in the morning. I have a feeling they may have had to open it up to inspect in the little Sheridan airport, and they might STILL be trying to put it all back together. I had to pack really tight....

And then there's my dead car-battery outside....

OH............gosh. What a day. What a month.

Last night after we had our final dinner at the house, I spent a few hours addressing kickstarter reward prints and valentines in the library. (I do have a hand-full of prints left to mail...I apologize for not being on schedule! More are on their way!) I stayed up too late, and considering I also went on a hike in the thousand acres yesterday...staying up to write 'til my elbow hurt and I couldn't think straight maybe wasn't the best idea...

View from a hilltop in "the thousands."
To the right you can see Jentel, and the driveway to the mailbox,
which I wallked to at least once a day...

Yesterday I also found MOUSE TRACKS in the snow on my hike.
Very glad.

I got up at 7am today, and worked on packing, which was awful. On future adventures I'll keep working in a miniature scale, and will plan on bringing even fewer clothes.

One last walk to the mailbox....

Many more photos of my rug....

Waiting to leave the house was agonizing. Anyone who knows me well won't be surprised to hear that I did a healthy amount of crying today. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Got a text message from Mollye when I landed in Charlotte...burst into tears.

The best news ever was that all six of us flew to Denver on the same flight. For the past month the six of us have been, well, often the only six people in our little wintery universe...so it was a comfort to have one more hour as we transitioned back into.....life, or the real world, or whatever.

As we arrived in Denver we scattered very quickly. I felt terrible today for many reasons, and here they are: lack of sleep, fatigue from yesterday's hike, general travel anxiety & loss of appetite, loss of appetite leading to nausea, over-layering of winter clothes to lighten suitcases + heavy lifting = worse nausea, and most of all, a SERIES of emotional goodbyes and deeply felt, uh, emotions.

But here I am...almost home to my kitty and kettle and cuckoo clock, three of the things I have really been ready to see again. And there's Trivia tomorrow at the Pizza Shoppe in ol' Spruce Pine.

Happy trails to my fellow wanderers. Hope you have all made it safely home.