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| Home :: Day 2 |
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17th May
2010 |
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17/05
Day 1 A volcano-defying Denver arrival. For over a week, the Icelandic Eyjafjallajokul volcano was threatening to plunge UK airspace, and therefore our trip, into chaos. During the early hours of the morning, ash concentrations became sufficient to close the airspace across Heathrow and it looked like it was game over. However, by some superb fortune, the ash levels decreased into the afternoon and airspace reopened unrestricted! Our flight was essentially on time leaving the UK, and ahead of time reaching Denver in Colorado. On the trip we took in some amazing views of Greenland and Northeast Canada, then on arriving in Denver at 7pm local time, we even had a thunderstorm to keep us occupied in the south Denver locale as light faded. We dropped off our stuff in the Sleep Inn Motel in Aurora just outside Denver, then hit Applebees for some well earned grub - almost 24hrs after starting our day! Total mileage: 10 miles |
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Our Boeing
777, basking in the UK sunshine at Heathrow.
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Patchy
cloud drifting across Southern England
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After
a few hours crossing the open Atlantic, and avoiding the Iceland ash,
we approached the southeastern tip of Greenland, with its ice-capped
mountains pointing skywards.
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A close
up shot of the edge of the sea ice surrounding Greenland, with thousands
of small icebergs breaking off and drifting out into the ocean.
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In the
heart of southern Greenland, the huge ice cap ends abruptly with spectacular
glaciers pouring down between the mountains.
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Looking
northwards into the heart of Greenland, as the coastal mountains and
lakes are swallowed up beneath the sprawling ice cap.
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A huge
lone iceberg drifts away from Greenland, looking like a goat with a
stiff neck!
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Needles
of ice clinging to the aircraft windows as outside air temperatures
drop to minus sixty Celsius.
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The inflight
graphics showing our approach to Denver.
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A weakening
thunderstorm looms over Denver airport as we taxi to the terminal.
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We've
arrived at our hotel in our blingy Buick, hereby known as the Brown
Unit.
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Dinner
stop number one - Applebees in Aurora. After 24hrs of being awake, we
we torn between eating our food and using it as a pillow!
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Rover
the dog (as we called him) spent hours in the car next to us, alternating
between poking his head out of the sunroof and perching in the driver's
seat.
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The 21:00
GRLevel3 radar showing small but severe warned storms to the south of
Denver. We observed some very frequent lightning from these.
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