Fear of Flying

I am not a fan of air travel. The time savings are nice, and if time is essential, worth the hassle. But every time while flying I look out the window, I know I am missing too much.
From 35,000 feet you can see so much more than you can from the 3 feet of your car seat; but you experience so much less. Flying over the Great Plains the other day I could see the earth beneath me laid out in nice neat one section squares. Some of the squares were further divided into two or three rectangles. In many sections you see circles touching all four sides of the square, but leaving gaps in the corners.
Then you can see the towns. Interestingly most of them neatly occupy two to four of the squares. To the air traveler who is even looking, they are just nameless little burgs that break up the landscape.
That is when I wish I was driving, and not on the interstate. We hurry too much across the country. Who lives in the town? What kind of businesses are there? You know there are churches and schools. Who is the pastor? How far do the kids travel to attend a consolidated school? All the questions we never ask, because we are flying over or buzzing by on the interstate.
I notice a clump of hills, not too far from one of the towns. On top of each hill, it looks like some giant bird flew by and left it spattered white. I would like to know what that is. If my Tahoe was my transportation, I could drive over and take a look, or at least stop and ask someone. Of course, if I were driving by in my Tahoe, I probably wouldn’t even know it was there, just some hills in the distance. I can’t even go back and look because I have no idea where we were.
Next month we are driving to the east coast. Our plan is to stop and experience a lot of the places we normally go over or around. Check in later, there might be some good stories.