Saturday, July 23, 2011

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.

1takeoff.jpg
Take off from the Bay Area was lovely.

2lake-CA?.jpg
Climbing toward the mountains, the most obvious features are various bodies of water.

3water in a dry land.jpg
Could that be Glen Canyon below? I have no idea, but it seems possible.

4crop circles -- many.jpg
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?

5thunderhead below.jpg
No wonder the plane started bouncing a bit with that thunderhead sticking up below.

6popcorn clouds over texas.jpg
Pretty soon, the clouds resolved themselves into what I thought of as "popcorn over Texas." (There's a lot of Texas.)

7lake at dallas.jpg
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?

8monster weather.jpg
Back aloft and flying northeast, there was weather alongside us.

9oxbow at 30000.jpg
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.

10landing in boston.jpg
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!

3 comments:

  1. The windows on your plane were cleaner than on the ones I have been flying on. It is fascinating to see the earth from above and wonder what those geographic bumps and lines are.

    I'm glad you had a safe flight and wish the same for your return journey.

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  2. Beautiful, Jan! Now that I'm healed enough to be able to sit for six hours, I'll be making the reverse trip in a few months and will look for some of the same landmarks.

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