Missing Passports

It is not unusual to misplace an item. I think it probably happens to everyone. Usually, the item makes an appearance eventually, often when we are least expecting it. My most recent misplaced item was our passports. Hubby and I agreed the last time either of us could positively, 100% say we had seen our passports was our last trip to Mexico, about a year ago. For 8 years I have placed them in the same location for travel between summer and winter homes. And once we reach those homes, the passports are moved to the same secure location, until this year. 

When it was time to leave for AZ in October (and even before) we searched the house high and low, inside and out, trying to locate our passports. We began to think we had left them in AZ because we did not plan to travel anywhere a passport would be needed during the summer. When we got to AZ, though, the passports were not where they should have been. A search of our 400' casa was much easier than a search of our REAL house as Miss W calls it. A thorough search of the casa came up empty.

That meant they had to be in our REAL house. We became so perplexed and anxious, we decided to rent a car during our January trip back to SD so we could drive 100 miles to check the house, ONE MORE TIME. Again nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zippo. (There were other reasons and benefits to the car rental, but the passport search was at the top of the list.)

The two of us decided on a Plan B: If, after one more exhaustive search of our real house when we returned in April did not reveal the missing little blue books, we would have to file a missing PP claim on May1. I was not looking forward to that process since I did not have any copies of our PP numbers, which one is supposed to have when filing the claim. But it is what it is. You do what you gotta' do.

On Thursday of last week, I was packing for a weekend trip to Yuma for a geocaching event. I store my red suitcase, MY traveling suitcase under the bed. I needed something from the suitcase, so pulled it out, and took what I needed. But before I put it back in storage, a little voice told me to search the red suitcase for the passports. That suitcase has traveled from AZ to SD to MN to the Black Hills to a family reunion and back to AZ by way of NE, CO, UT, NV. In all those trips and stays, I had not opened the inside zippered compartment of the red suitcase, but I did last Thursday. When I did, guess what I found?

The little blue books had been with me/us all these months, in a logical place. It just wasn't the same logical place I had been using the previous 8 years. Since returning from Yuma AND a side trip to the Mexican border town of Algodones, I have made a copy of our PP numbers. It is filed in a secure, LOGICAL location, as are the passports...until we travel back to SD.

Let's hope I remember where I put them this trip.

Oh, and if you have a passport? Make a copy of the 'front' page and keep the copy in a different secure location than the passports...just in case yours go missing for 10 months.