If look closely at the above photo, you’ll see a bay coming in from the Pacific at the top right, carving inland to the top-center. That’s Monterey Bay. I’m posting all the remaining photos from our mid-April approach to SFO, following the flight from Amsterdam which, as we’ve shown you in prior posts, cut over the norther half of Greenland before plunging south along the Pacific Coast. This photo was taken in the midst of our complex circling in order to line up for (north-facing) approach to SFO. If you’re interested in better understanding the geography, just open a map and see how the “peninsula” sits between the (more enclosed) SF bay and the open, further south Monterey Bay. Here we’re beginning a clockwise circle from our southbound course, so I’m looking south and we’re still turning west and north. The shots below follow the rest of that trajectory in order, although the first shot was taken a minute or so before the one above. Enjoy 🙂
Above, Mt Rainier from on high. Another contribution from Sam: thanks! Below, more snowy mountains, this time in northern Greenland as I flew by in April en route to SF. Theme = snowy mountains, to mentally cool those sweating through hot days :-).
San Pablo Bay (north end of SF Bay), Richmond-San Rafael Bridge; Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta stretching east from San Pablo to the Central Valley & Sacramento, with snow-capped Sierras in the distance; Mt Tam, Mill Valley, Sausalito & Marin County bottom right as we flew over on 16 April during that long, photo-productive approach to SF :-).
Although I did find the clouds and the dawn sky lovely, I took and am sharing this photo because of the coast of Donegal County, which you can see most clearly just above the turbine / engine. This was a bit just north of the farthest northwest that Nikos and I got in our road trip last November.
No, it’s not pretty – but it’s the last view I had of my Amsterdam home before the plane entered the heavy cloud layer. Below: the last photo I took before we landed about 10-1/2 hours later at SFO. Bit of a contrast, eh?
We’ll call these both Massachusetts, since I no longer recall what we might have been flying over when I took these last-remaining photos from the flight between A’dam and Boston late on the 18th of August.
Penang Island from the mainland: above, as seen on 29th of November as we neared our landing; below, as seen during my flight from Kuala Lumpur to Yangon on the 6th of December.
So last week I flew off for some visits to our project locations again, changing planes in Doha. This meant we flew over some parts of Iraq I’ve come to know a bit, and I’m reasonably confident that the city you see here by night is Erbil, though the in-flight map didn’t identify enough cities to confirm this hypothesis.
I do so love when I can look out the plane window and see something that exactly corresponds to the map. This is the little bay just north of Norfolk. It’s on a fairly straight line between Amsterdam and Dublin, so we flew right over it en route to Dublin last week. Might’ve done on the way back as well, but, well, clouds…
We’ve swung a bit southeast to fly in more on the south side of Lac Leman, so you’re seeing Lac Leman at the top right, and more of Lac Neuchatel at the top lef, with some little lakes in mountains in front of them.
I knew I was seeing the southeastern end of Lac Neuchatel, which meant that curving lake in the distance was the eastern end of Lac Leman…and then I noticed a mountain rising noticeably higher than its neighbors and concluded it must be Mont Blanc. Took the close up below to convince myself. Was I wrong?
I’m calling this France because most of that September return trip happened over France. In October, they took us over more of Germany and approached from inland, whereas in the September journey we flew up the west coast of NL, as we’ve shown you in a past postor two…
If look closely at the above photo, you’ll see a bay coming in from the Pacific at the top right, carving inland to the top-center. That’s Monterey Bay. I’m posting all the remaining photos from our mid-April approach to SFO, following the flight from Amsterdam which, as we’ve shown you in prior posts, cut over the norther half of Greenland before plunging south along the Pacific Coast. This photo was taken in the midst of our complex circling in order to line up for (north-facing) approach to SFO. If you’re interested in better understanding the geography, just open a map and see how the “peninsula” sits between the (more enclosed) SF bay and the open, further south Monterey Bay. Here we’re beginning a clockwise circle from our southbound course, so I’m looking south and we’re still turning west and north. The shots below follow the rest of that trajectory in order, although the first shot was taken a minute or so before the one above. Enjoy 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 