Was my US Airways kidding when he said we'd be cruising @ 49,000 Ft in the CR-J?

The flight Attendant said "they flew at 59k feet days earlier to avoid some big storms". We also had to fly above storms on this day of question. I didn't think commercial planes went above 42K and generally stayed in the lower to mid 30s to save on gas – which provides bumpy rides sometimes.

Also, I am a pretty good judge of whether a plane is climbing, leveling off, or descending, and this plane (for a good bit of the first half of the 2hr flight) looked and felt like it was climbing, if not higher than 40k Ft flights.

What is also kind of wired is that I looked up the flight on “Flight Aware” afterwards, and the plane was on record of just flying at 29,000 feet for the longest time. I find it hard to believe it was at 29K, because it flew as high, if not higher than any flight I’ve ever been on. I thought we were in astronaut training, lol.

So, next question: How reliable is “Flight Aware”?