I thought maybe the airplane from our small airport to Las Vegas was going to be almost empty because they kept their $29 one way (before fees and taxes) fare up until departure day, but when I got to the terminal and saw all the cowboy hats I remembered that the rodeo was in town.

This was a wonderful group to wait for an airplane with. They all showed up early - because they were told to - all sporting neat barbershop haircuts and clean well-fitting clothes. They passed the time by getting acquainted with one another, discovering mutual friends, and drinking pitchers of beer.

In this photo the man on the left in the yellow shirt is calling his uncle on the man on the right's cell phone because they discovered they both know him. When the uncle answered the nephew said 'Yer talkin' to the wrong guy. This is yer nefew callin' on his phone.' and they all laughed for awhile and everyone in the room laughed with them.



When we got on the plane and there wasn't room in the overheads for all the cowboy hats, they kept them on, and looking to the rear of the plane, it was a sea of Stetsons.

I cringed when we were getting on because the young couple across the aisle had to put their suitcases several rows behind them. This usually means a lot of chaos when trying to get off the plane, but the strangest thing: as the plane was unloading, the people behind got his suitcases out of the overhead and passed them over the backs of the seats so there was no interruption in the flow of passengers. That was so nice. Usually air travelers would just glare at him for slowing things down as if their lives are so perfect all of the time and this would never happen to them.

We were making up time on the flight so flew a more northern route over the Rocky Mountains than I've seen before and although the sun had set there was still enough light to get a few pictures out of the window.



Because of the high altitude of the Rocky Mountain region, flying at 20,000 feet or whatever it is puts the airplanes only 6,000 feet above the high mountain peaks, so there is more to see than when flying over the midwest or the coasts. Sometimes you can actually see cars moving on the roads.

As we fly over them I trace the roads and look for places where I took wrong turns in my travels by car. This is picture below is one of them, south of Lake Powell where I missed the turn and went a couple hours out of my way on my way to Las Vegas a couple of years ago. It was very scenic and worth the extra time and miles. I don't know if you can pick it out, but the Colorado River is at the bottom of Marble Canyon, headed for the larger Grand Canyon.



In case you are wondering what the weather is like here, yesterday it snowed all day. It's been a very dry year, so all the moisture is appreciated and it was a thrill for people around here to see snow.