We had a good trip home yesterday. It was the shortest trip ever - 23 1/2 hours door to door which included 3 hours at the Brisbane and 4 at the LA airports. We have been raving about Virgin Australia to everyone. The plane we had was on its maiden flight having gone into service Nov. 25th - as the attendant said,"It even smells new." The seating is good and more room for legs than on other flights - we were in economy and not at a bulkhead. The food is good, plenty of it, good wine, and bottled water is passed out as soon as the seat belt sign goes off. The planes are fast - 13 hours down and 12 home. I got some sleep and after checking out the house where we arrived at 3:25, I swam - I think it helps adjust, it sure did flying down when we swam the afternoon we arrived.
The Blackwells left in a rainstorm for Noosa after leaving us at the security gate. I hope they got a bit of sun on their short break. Rachael was the driver to the airport - first time we drove with her and she did a fine job. It was raining then and looked as tho it would all day - the first all day rain we would have had. We did get lots of sun and cloud days with showers, but the weather was great overall. It was a good visit - participation in another milestone passed by the grandchildren and very relaxing and easy for us with delicious dinners and good conversation provided each night - who could ask for more?
The flight from LA to Denver provided beautiful scenery. Even LA was sharp with the mountains, dark green, appearing clear and very close. We flew over Venice Beach and could see the UCLA campus clearly as well as the Santa Monica Mts. Then as we flew east the vast dryness of massive areas of the west was evident. The colors were endlessly changing as were the patterns on the surface. The flat, uninteruppted yellowish tan, of central California was first, then a few clusters of homes appeared surrounded by tiny areas of green. Next came more tan but patterned with ridges that gave a dark contrast to the general color. Las Vegas was a set of small rectangles, monochrome again with no green relief. Lake Mead seemed a huge, dark blue spill that ran for miles edged with shades of white, yellow and tan with scattered groups of white tiny boxes surrounded with green along its edge. Orderly white specks appeared on the flat, blue surface wherever there was a green area. The surface became much more unbalanced with erratic designs in the yellow, orange, red spectrum with each color revealing a range of values that illustrated the structure of the mountains - deep valleys, eroded mesas, canyons were all there. This was followed by some flattish areas of dark gray with small areas of white scattered about which soon gave way to tan and brownish flatness broken into large squares bounded by dark lines. Occasionally a rectangle would enclose a circle of slightly darker color arranged so all four sides touched the circle. These disappeared and again dark gray and white areas returned on a crumpled surface. Suddenly we were over a massive region of reddish-yellow sand with a few very dark green, wide lines drawn on it. We flew through the first clouds of the flight and emerged to see large multi-colored rectangles imposed on flat land. Denver rose in the distance, a concrete strip was under the plane, and we were 'home.' I've flown over that area a number of times, but had never seen it so impressive, clear and beautiful.
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