Roads to nowhere

Flying from San Francisco to Houston involves time spent over vast stretches of arid landscape. (Think part of California followed by New Mexico, Arizona and vast portions of Texas). Only the occasional light dusting of snow which serves to emphasize the eons of rock layers visible in the raw edges of cliffs.

Water courses are rare, etched deeply onto the earth without visible green clinging to their banks. From mountains and cliffs we flew on to high desert reddish tinged from the presence of iron oxides.

 

Since I had failed to download United’s InFlight app, watching our progress on a map wasn’t an option. The best I can do is estimate from time & camera our route. I could see old creek beds snaking their way empty and almost no signs of human habitation.

 

As we traveled further, there was water.

 

The contours of the land don’t always make sense. Perhaps it is my lack of training in geology? But then, man made might account for some. The rest? Mostly sharp contrasts between the zones.

(15+ minute break for turbulence. I was facing West looking at desert. The mountain ranges out the port-side might have contributed to the rough ride. )

It was almost two hours into the flight before i saw my first tinges of green and what possibly was my first sight of multiple dwellings.

That too passed to be replaced by an area of crop circles & a WTF pit with turquoise reflection that rapidly faded behind me.

Roads so straight they could have been drawn with a ruler contrast to tracks too narrow to allow 2 way travel following the contours of the land.

And then there just might what you can do if you have money; assuming a node of civilization not visible to me off the other side of the plane.

Then the turbulence completely ceased by 1000 which would have been wonderful had it not been accompanied by a thick layer of clouds putting an end to my fun with photography except for the occasional glimpses of land rapidly becoming agricultural throughly salted with human habitation.

 

 

As I wrote the above, we passed back into smooth, cloud free airspace with fields stretching off to the horizon, for all of five minutes. Between musings I am reading Midnight in Siberia by David Greene and receiving teasers that tell me I have incoming gmail without actually being able to open or read it.

We land ahead of schedule in Houston.

FYI- This was United 540. A 0720 depart on the SFO-IAH route. The camera is my trusty Canon 5D Mark III with a 24-105 lens.

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About Holly

fiber person - knitter, spinner, weaver who spent 33 years being a military officer to fund the above. And home. And family. Sewing and quilting projects are also in the stash. After living again in Heidelberg after retiring (finally) from the U.S. Army May 2011, we moved to the US ~ Dec 2015. Something about being over 65 and access to health care. It also might have had to do with finding a buyer for our house. Allegedly this will provide me a home base in the same country as our four adult children, all of whom I adore, so that I can drive them totally insane. Considerations of time to knit down the stash…(right, and if you believe that…) and spin and .... There is now actually enough time to do a bit of consulting, editing. Even more amazing - we have only one household again. As long as everyone understands that I still, 40 years into our marriage, don't do kitchens or bathrooms. For that matter, not being a golden retriever, I don't do slippers or newspapers either. I don’t miss either the military or full-time clinical practice. Limiting my public health/travel med/consulting and lecturing to “when I feel like it” has let me happily spend my pension cruising, stash enhancing (oops), arguing with the DH about where we are going to travel next and book buying. Life is good!
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10 Responses to Roads to nowhere

  1. Alison says:

    That was a somewhat familiar route. With my FIL now gone, I don’t know when we’ll fly it again. I enjoyed the photographic memory jogging; thank you.

  2. Holly Doyne says:

    da nada

  3. Beverly says:

    Fantastic pictures!

    Your mention of the United InFlight app prompted me to go and look for a more generic one, and I came across Flyover Country, a free (!) app developed by the University of Minnesota under a National Science Foundation grant. It operates offline (you can save the maps you will need beforehand so that you are not dependent on expensive in-flight wifi) and gives a choice of street maps, satellite maps, landscape features and geological maps & features. There is also a lot of reference material, including a guide to clouds and landscapes, and an illustrated guide to “Rocks seen from 35,000 ft.”! I have only just started exploring it but it looks good. It only needs GPS so it can be used in flight-safe mode (I think!).

    • Holly Doyne says:

      Thanks! that app is cool and free counts for a lot. FYI – cell phones don’t interfere any longer with flight navigation – they just don’t want you on your phone on the flight.

      Turning off the ringer and exercising reasonable behavior is good enough.

  4. Steve says:

    Houston? You becoming an astronaut…or you’re then going down to Galveston and are on a cruise?

  5. Holly Doyne says:

    Nah – just change of planes en route to Belize

  6. Janet says:

    What are you doing in Houston?

  7. Barbara says:

    Did you like the book?

    • Holly Doyne says:

      Actually, very much. I do not read that much non-fiction outside of professional literature. But this is an engaging and personal look by a writer who is both very readable and provides references for those who like to look up such things.

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