Californian clouds and mountains

These were looking particularly fine today.  I know the flight path between Albuquerque and LAX so very well, in large part because I know the ground beneath so well - so I can look out of the window and check off town after town as we fly slightly south of I-40, and then drop down to follow I-10, roughly.  But as we go over the mountains of the Mojave - Coxcomb Mountains; Eagle Mountain, and so on - I always feel less oriented; the roads are less obvious - at least until we get to Salton Sea and Palm Springs territory.  And today, the clouds were clumping over these mountains, and making the ground invisible, and creating a momentary sense of strangeness and wonder instead of the very familiar (all intimations of the wondrously strange are, of course, instantly shattered when one drops down and sees the endless sprawl of LA).