The view from my office...

Ever since I was a little kid, I have loved watching planes fly. Take-offs, landings or just slicing through the sky and leaving contrails, I love it all. When I am working a trip, I love it when I have the time to look outside and see the geography. One of the places I enjoy flying into is Salt Lake City (SLC) because of the surrounding salt and mud flats, the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountains. The flats are strangely beautiful to me.

I also love taking off and landing in Anchorage (ANC)--the landing because of the stunning scenery of the snow-topped Chugach mountains, and the Cook Inlet. And taking off there because it has always been at night for me, so that adds another dimension. The last time I did, I saw the Northern Lights--beautiful and eerie. It's a very different geography than we have here on the East Coast, and I don't get to see it often. Actually, most of the airports out West are cool to look at when we are landing because of the mountains--they are so jagged there! *This picture of the Northern Lights isn't mine, it was "borrowed" from the Internet...



These are the Smokey Mountains early one foggy morning after taking off at 0600 from Chattanooga, Tennessee (CHA). I love the way the fog lays in between the mountains. These Eastern mountains are what I see more frequently--very soft looking mountains, compared to those in the West.

As Flight Attendants, one of the most common questions we get from our passengers, at 37,000 feet, two-and-a-half hours into a five hour flight is, "Where are we?" or "What state are we over?" The answer is, "I don't know." (It isn't one of the classes we take at the Flight Academy.) We could guess, but your guess would be as good as mine. (At my regional airline, I could--and did--call the cockpit very easily and ask the question, but it really isn't something I can do at my major airline now.) A couple of years ago, I was being a smart aleck it came back and to bite me, as it usually does! One of the most frequently used approaches to land in Chicago (ORD) is coming in over Lake Michigan--which is a huge body of water. We were over the Lake, and I was preparing the cabin for landing when a passenger asked me "What ocean are we flying over?" I playfully replied "The Pacific." and winked. I thought he knew I was kidding with him until I heard him say to his wife, "I didn't know Chicago was so far west." Oops! My bad! Of course, I turned back around and told him it was Lake Michigan and for him to quit pulling his wife's leg--hoping to save face for both of us!





This is the view through the window of one of the airplane's doors at sunrise.












Snow and ice--somewhere over the Midwest.














Me, on a ferry flight--a flight where the plane and crew are being repositioned, without passengers--sitting in the extra jumpseat in the cockpit.





Another ferry flight--this one heading East one morning.

I haven't flown since the end of August--I am recovering from my surgery (don't make me show you those pictures!) I am getting antsy and miss flying. And, I don't go back to work for another month. So, thanks for walking down "Memory Taxiway" with me today!