No, I Didn't

A trip report (in installments) will follow, but I wanted to mention this item separately.

When I'm in San Diego, I access my mail, and the 'Net in general, via my brother's computer. He's given me permission to bookmark things, but I'd rather not leave my fingerprints on someone else's machine, so I visit my usual haunts via Google.

At any rate, one day last week I decided to pop in on Websnark. I typed it in, and Google dutifully located the site for me. However, it felt compelled to ask:

Did you mean: websnarf

I don't think I want to know.

"Cheshire Crossing"

The author of "Casey and Andy" (who is winding up that strip) has begun a new webcomic. This will be published in "issues", each to be posted in its entirety; the first issue (29 pages long) has now been posted, and it's wonderful.

Let me put it this way: the lead characters are Alice Liddell, Wendy Darling, and Dorothy Gale.

Check it out: Cheshire Crossing.

Friendly Skies

Wednesday. Whenever I fly between the Midwest and the West Coast, I try to get a window seat. I love viewing the western landscape from a great height. (The land is beautiful from any vantage, but I particularly enjoy overflights.) I was flying Frontier Airlines and had been slow to get my ticket, so I'd been assigned a middle seat, but the counterman shifted me to a window for both legs of the flight. (Since I was flying Frontier, I had to change planes in Denver. My late purchase had, harrumph, nothing to do with that.)

The skies were clear all the way from St. Louis to San Diego, and though I was tired enough (dogs, and pre-trip fretting) to catnap intermittently, there was much to see, especially on the second leg.

Look down on the peaks of the Rockies, spattered with snow even though it's mid-June.

Look down again, on the badlands. The land is carved, high and low: mesas overlook canyons, and off to the west, miles wide, is a giant's staircase.

Again: the land looks like bare rock, lightly sprinkled with ruddy dust, filigreed with dry watercourses; there, and again there, is an actual river.

Again: the rusty rocks are broken up by upthrusts of black rock - basalt, I'd assume; they are more and more frequent, and off to the west they achieve predominance.

Doze a bit, and look again. The land below is traditional desert, tan expanses of sand, suddenly interrupted by sharply delineated rectangles of green, dark and light both. We're into the thirsty but fertile farmland of the Imperial Valley, and the Salton Sea is just ahead.

One last view, as we pass over a final low range of mountains - the Cuyamacas, where my Scout troop often camped back in the '70s. (In 1971 the Cuyamacas went up in flames; we were camping that weekend, until a ranger came by and ordered us out. We made it out, but only just; it rained ashes over the city for a week or more. It's regrown, burned, and regrown again since then, and it's still beautiful country.) The descent is uneventful, and I'm back in the family stomping grounds.