What Do You See Flying LAX to DFW?

So, you’ve scored a window seat and you’re heading east from Los Angeles (LAX) to Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW). It’s a nice day, good flying weather.

You’re trapped in the middle of a group of fifty or more French tourists who apparently don’t speak a word of English. The only French you know you learned from Pepe le Pew, so there won’t be any scintillating conversations with the two pre-teens that you’re sharing Row Eighteen with.

You’re reading “Feed” by Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) and while it’s really great, reading it for three straight hours will cause your head to explode and flying shards of your skull may injure innocent bystanders. We don’t want that. (Well, Seanan might want that, but she’s different. She’s allowed.)

“So what’s that out the window?” you ask, knowing that I take a LOT of pictures.

First, you notice a honkin’ big wing right outside your window. This is good for flying, but not so good for sightseeing and taking pictures. Out over the ocean, you can see the coastal marine layer stretching off to infinity, with Catalina Island popping up through it. Once you climb out of the soup you can see that the coastal clouds come inland almost to I-15.

The Salton Sea is a pretty hard landmark to miss.

Here there be solar power farms! Big and getting bigger every day.

The Colorado River is a strip of green life and farms in a huge stretch of rock and sand.

Occasionally you’ll see a reservoir in what looks like the middle of nowhere. Rest assured, there’s a city nearby — in this case Phoenix, off on the horizon.

Over Arizona and New Mexico we start dodging some thunderstorms.

Over west Texas it gets really, really flat, with occasional circular irrigation fields showing up.

Towns and airports wander by. I think this one might be St Johns, but I would have to check a sectional to be sure.

About the time the engines throttle back and you start your descent from 39,000 feet, the circular irrigation fields are common. What I don’t understand is why some of them only cover a “slice” of the “pie” instead of the whole thing.

And then you’re in DFW, trying desperately to get from your arrival gate to your departure gate (which is two area codes away) and get this thing typed up on the iPhone and iPad and posted before the flight crew tells me to shut down.

Oh, look, MY BAG! It’s on the same plane as I am. That’s a good sign!

Posting & shutting down, no time to proofread. Don’t want to “do a Baldwin”! (How many typos slipped through?)

Son of a… Just got to Virginia Beach and realized that this didn’t post. I really did hit “Publish” at 18:11 on the plane sitting at the gate at DFW, but I guess I shut down the iPad too quickly. Oh, well. It’s still Saturday in Los Angeles.