To Sacramento for Wanda's Birthday Celebration
August 2, 2012
 | We took off from Atlanta for a flight to Sacramento, lifting off at about 9:10. We were soon soaring above the clouds. This was 20 minutes into the flight. |
At 1 hour 20 minutes into the trip we were over the patchwork fields of eastern Kansas farmland. |  |
 | At 2 hr 30 minutes we had crossed the dry plains of western Kansas and were approaching the mountains of southern Colorado. |
At 3 hours we were over an intriguing river canyon close to the Colorado-Utah line I think. |  |
 | It was remarkable to be able to see so much detail of this large river canyon system from over 30,000 ft altitude. |
I was just shooting interesting scenery out the plane window, but this shot turned out to be very interesting in retrospect after the trip. The blue lake near the right of the picture is Topaz Lake, straddling the California and Arizona borders. We passed it on our drive from Mono Lake to Lake Tahoe. At the extreme left of the view is Mono Lake itself I believe. So I had recorded the path of part of our exploration beforehand. The road we traveled was US 395, which ran along the base of the mountains just beyond the green pastureland you can see, and skirted Topaz Lake on the mountain side of the lake.
 | At just over 4 hours into the flight we came into view of Lake Tahoe on the eastern edge of California. This is the south end of the lake with the town of South Tahoe on its shore. We stayed there the nights of Aug 7-8. The peak lower left shows the ski run development, and the peak above it is my guess about where our ski lift took us on Aug 8. |
With the town of South Tahoe at lower left, this shows the relative location of Emerald Bay with its tiny Fannette Island. It was one of our favorite spots. |  |
 | This is a closer view of Emerald Bay which shows the road we drove around the bay. |
I was surprised to see so much rice growing as we made our approach to the Sacramento airport. They appeared to be super-flat fields with dikes at the edges. |  |
 | The Sacramento River was close, so these canals may have fed from there. Elsewhere we saw pumps going. I don't remember seeing this much rice when we came in 2004. |
| Visit with Wanda and family |
2012