The flight home went smoothly, and pleasantly was without incident. On the final leg, from Philadelphia, I was given a window seat and rewarded with welcoming views of eastern Oregon and Mount Hood breaking through generally overcast skies. We were home by 9 PM and were delighted to find fresh-baked cookies on the kitchen counter and milk in the fridge - it's great having my sister living nearby as a neighbor now!

For us this was a remarkable journey. All of the important things broke our way - no sickness or health issues (other than a tooth I broke last Friday in a losing fight with a piece dried kiwi fruit), generally great weather, no accidents (other than Rachael's badly bruised toe), no mechanical breakdowns (other than a flat tire I couldn't change on the road), no real crises at all (other than losing each other for four hours on Col d'Agnes). These few minor incidents just added spice to an otherwise flawless tour. We were especially lucky in aligning our trip to the season - it was remarkable timing to arrive at Col d'Aubisque, the high point of the trip, on the day after it first opened for the season.

Right now we are a bit in awe of this. Together with our tour last fall to Portugal and Andalucia and the one last spring to Crete and eastern Greece, we have strung together three straight picture-perfect trips in two years. Each of them has a fair claim to being the best tour of our lives. We're feeling a bit superstitious of all this, and don't want to break anything.

Thanks for reading along, and I hope you enjoyed it or were inspired to come to this region yourself. For that matter I hope we are lucky enough to pass this way again ourselves someday. For now though I can't wait for this year's Tour de France - I'm sure I'll never see the Pyrennean stages the same way in the future now that we've seen for ourselves.

Heart

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