I have been doing a lot of flying in and out of Detroit as of late, but have not been overnight there. I have had some pretty interesting instrument approaches there, however. Today it was freezing fog in Detroit with a visibility at one point of just 1/16th of a mile. Over the radio, we heard a few airlines make a call that they had to divert. One even remarked that they were going to return to O'Hare. It's a sad state of affairs when the better weather option is Chicago. We brought the throttles back hoping the visibility might increase enough for us to get in. We executed what is known as a CAT II approach. It is where my eyes are glued to the digital displays as I fly the airplane down to within 100 ft of the runway. During this time, the captain is looking outside the window (at mostly nothing) until the last few seconds, when the runway lights fade into view and we transfer controls for the landing. It's an interesting experience to say the least and I've done two of these types of approaches in the last 24 hours. That is rare. Even the captain said he's only seen weather that bad once before in his flying career.
When I took the picture here, the weather in Detroit had improved to a visibility of more than 1 mile and overcast at 400 feet. After dealing with 1/4 mile vis. and fog on the ground, this seemed like pretty excellent weather in comparison. At the end of the day, we arrived in South Bend, Indiana. All I really knew about this place is from watching Rudy, and a brief moment from my youth when my dad drove us through Notre Dame's campus. Again, it's not entirely what I envisioned. We are staying in downtown South Bend, which is actually quite nice other than the fact that everything is closed on Sunday evening. I tried to get Thai food, but it was closed. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. Indiana Thai food is probably on par with Iowa Mexican. I don't know why I'm drawn to ethnic food in all these towns. I suppose it lends itself to more interesting blogging. Nobody really cares if I go to Arby's. In the end, I got a couple slices of pizza at a place called Bruno's, which appears to be a local chain. It wasn't anything special, but it was the only place open, so for that I am grateful.
I ended up walking to the Notre Dame campus, which was a bit of a hike. When I finally got there, I immediately got lost. I didn't have any particular destination in mind, but I hadn't really realized just how large the campus is. The old architecture and the landscaping made it seem like something out of a movie. This might actually be normal in the rest of the country, but my college campus had no green since it was in the middle of Washington, DC. During my wandering, I walked by a big church. I'm sure it has a name and is probably famous, but for now we shall just call it "big church." In the back, I found the grotto which I vaguely remembered from my youth visit. As it was getting late, and I was a bit tired, this is all I really had the energy to see. My dad described the area surrounding the campus like the streets of Compton, so I didn't want to stick around too long. Tomorrow is the last of my four day trip. Then it's back to beautiful Minneapolis for 24 hours.UPDATE:
After the meal, I went for a walk by the St Joseph River. There was a wooden plank path to a small island where I got a view of . . . a dam? I guess they've tried to make it look aesthetically pleasing by lighting it up with different colored lights at night. I would compare it to Long Beach's attempt to disguise oil platforms as tropical islands. It was a nice little walk and it appears to continue down the river a ways, but I had to return to the hotel to prepare for my flight to Atlanta.
