Last week, when we went to pick up my cousin at McAllen International Airport, her flight was a few minutes late, so as we waited, we explored a bit.

We were surprised at the small size of the terminal. I don’t know why we expected something larger. There are three international airports within about a 60 mile drive here in the lower Rio Grande Valley (RGV)

The relatively small area (4,800 sq mi) of the RGV has a population of over one million people. By comparison, our province is 251,700 sq mi. (about 9/10 the size of the entire state of Texas) with a total population of 1.1 million people.

As we were walking towards the observation area to watch for my cousin’s plane to land, hubs said, “Did you see that?” I looked around and had no idea what he was talking about. He pointed up and right above me, suspended from the rafters, there was a monoplane.

I’ve since learned that this monoplane is a replica, but it’s still a perfect display for its location. Looking at the monoplane and then looking out the windows at the big jets arriving and leaving, one gets a vivid reminder how far along flight has come in a fairly short time frame.

Photo Note: My original photo was a bit overexposed because of the skylight above the monoplane. This was an easy and quick fix in Snapseed, using only the accentuate pre-set filter, followed by a little tweak on the brightness slider on the tune image tool, and then adding a soft contrast using the curves tool.

“Have you noticed how nobody ever looks up? Nobody looks at chimneys, or trees against the sky, or the tops of buildings. Everybody just looks down at the pavement or their shoes. The whole world could pass them by and most people wouldn’t notice.”

Julie Andrews Edwards