On the ground again (no song by that title, right?)

After an entire day traveling, I am finally at home in my “condo” (I am old-fashioned enough to still want to call it an “apartment”!) in Milwaukee. As are all good traveling days, this one was unexceptional. Quite a few bumps between San Juan and DFW, but not enough to distract me from reading on my tablet. Testimony to how engrossed I was in the book, I read it right through the landing sequence and the taxi to the gate…No one seemed to notice or care. Makes you wonder how dangerous all those electronic devices on planes really are. (I know, I know – if EVERYONE had one on…)

Anyway, the only notable thing about the trip was landing in Milwaukee. The sky was completely overcast, so from above it looked like a huge sea of fluffy, puffs. Imagine: We’re descending right toward this seeming barrier of white (Reminded me of movie sequences of planes diving into the water). Brace for an impact! Instead, just a seamless entrance into a completely white world. After a few minutes, I can begin to see darker areas beneath us and finally we are flying over water (Lake Michigan for the geographically challenged). It is really eerie because we are still in this white world of the clouds but we can just make out water below us, and it is calm, so I am not really sure of what I am seeing (I was actually thinking that maybe there was some sort of distortion in the plane window.) Descending further and looking ahead, there are two areas that are lighter in color and seem to glow slightly. Land ahoy! It is beautiful. Everything stretching away to the south is a shade of gray or white, and slowly the coast of Wisconsin comes out of the “mist” and I can actually see smokestacks and buildings on the shore. The greys are taking on a slight blue cast but the landscape is surreal and very otherworldly. It isn’t until we are actually over land and much lower in our approach that the colors change from greys to browns. Only on the runway, do we finally return to the world of colors like red and yellow.