Traveling Pics

We're on a fairly last minute trip to celebrate a birthday with family and friends.

We left a cloudy Anchorage a week or so ago, but the sun was there.

A change of planes in Seattle and a view of Rainier as we head east.  Our flight left Anchorage late and there was some question about whether we'd catch the next flight.  But it was late too.  

I'm guessing this was over Montana.  I'm always amazed at how much "empty" land there is when you fly over the US.  

As the Anchorage Assembly decries the lack of buildable land in town, we passed over miles and miles of such property.  How big do we want Anchorage to be?  Big enough that it is indistinguishable from cities in the Lower 48?

So this was in Chicago.  Oak Park to be precise.  Some of you will know why I took this picture, but I imagine most won't.  If you look closely, this bike has a generator to power the battery for the lights.  I had one of those on my very first bike.  When you want the light to work, you let the top of the generator lean against the tire, and as the tire turns, it generates electricity.

Here we are in Chicago  - picture from the transit train.

And we transferred to the subway downtown.

                                                           

 Which became the 'el' 9elevated) soon and we even passed practically through Wriggly Field during a Cubs game.

It took a bit to figure out the system, but by our second day we were getting around pretty well.  Until the second to the last station, where the train stopped but didn't start again.  There was an announcement that there was a person on the tracks ahead.  That was about a 30 minute delay.  

 And here's Lake Michigan.  I've been reading Halldór Laxness' Independent People.  This picture of Lake Michigan reminds of me of the passage when the girl Asta Sollilja is leaving her home in rural Iceland for the first time.  She marvels at the changing landscapes.  But then they reach a stretch that is more desolate and unchanging.  

"The chill isolation of the moorland plateau reigned over these two wayfarers and they were silent.  The dreary monotony of the landscape dulled their senses;  she  began to feel hungry and no longer looked for or delighted in the things that were strange to her. 

Again and again the girl waited for the next hilltop to refresh the eye with some variation, some new prospect, but always it was the same endless repetition except that the gleaming waters of the lake had long since been left in the rear.  She had lost all her anticipation and had long grown tired of expecting anything in particular when the road, turning suddenly, dipped downward along the side of a deep ravine with river at the bottom.  And when she looked eastward along the gap, expecting to see another hill in front of her, lo and behold, there was nothing to see; it was as if the world came to a sudden stop before her eyes and the depth of the skies took its place, though with a different shade of blue.  Or was it that the sky was supported out on the horizon there by a gleaming wall of blue-green glass?  This strange blue color seemed to embrace all the mysteries of distance, and she stood for a moment overwhelmed by the prospect of such infinity.  It was as if she had come to the edge of the world.

"Father," she said in a perplexed and hesitating voice, "where are we?"

"We've crossed the heath,"  he replied.  "That's the ocean."

Lake Michigan is not an ocean, but it does extend out into the horizon like an ocean.  Can you see the blue green glass supporting the sky?