Saturday scenes and scenery: a cross country flight

This week I experienced something I haven't in many years, if ever. The vagaries of finding the cheapest cross country flight (San Francisco to Boston) available crammed me on a 10-hour daytime ride, with one stop in Dallas, in a window seat. This might have been my definition of hell, but it turned out to be fun. Today's post is the result, captured on my cellphone.


Take off from the Bay Area was lovely.


Climbing toward the mountains, the most obvious features are various bodies of water.


Could that be Glen Canyon below? I have no idea, but it seems possible.


Over Texas, I learned there's some kind of agriculture that is likely to inspire belief in crop circles. Perhaps the pattern has to do with irrigation?


No wonder the plane started bouncing a bit with that thunderhead sticking up below.


Pretty soon, the clouds resolved themselves into what I thought of as "popcorn over Texas." (There's a lot of Texas.)


I was surprised by this, evidently human-made, lake near Dallas. I don't think of central Texas as having any water at all. But what do I know?


Back aloft and flying northeast, there was weather alongside us.


This classic oxbow river bend was probably in the Mississippi. As we flew east, the particulate matter in the air seemed to thicken and views of the ground became less distinct.


We landed at Boston at sunset. This was the only cell phone shot that miserably fails to do justice to what the eye could see. The sun appeared huge and orange, not this tiny bright spot. But hey -- they were finally going to let us escape from this plastic tube!