January 14: Back to the Frozen Tundra

Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay


Our best view of the Southern Cross was from the light-polluted skies of San Jose. The Cross stands upright to the left of the telephone pole, while Alpha and Beta Centauri are diagonally above and left of the floodlight. Alpha is the brighter. Alpha is the third brightest star in the sky and I was surprised at just how brilliant it is.
Shuffle out sleepily, shuttle to the airport, wait.
Last view from the ground.
Barva is one of the volcanoes overlooking San Jose. It has not erupted in historic times.
Barva. The steep slope in the middle distance is the one we descended on the previous day to get a nice vie of San Jose.
San Jose.
Turrialba Volcano with a small plume drifting down from the summit.
Above: the mountains around San Jose. Below: I was lucky enough to get a nice view of the crater of Poas Volcano.
A meandering river in Nicaragua.
Reefs and shoals off the southern coast of Cuba.
The coast of Cuba
Clouds over Cuba
Views of Miami
Below: Miami Airport
Stampede!
And we wait for the flight to Chicago.

Below: the slow flow of water in the Everglades is visible on satellite imagery as a prominent grain to the landscape, but I was amazed at how obvious it is even from an airliner.

An inverted sun-dog and reflection of the sun on cirrus clouds below the plane.
Intricate ripples in the low cloud deck.
O'Hare Airport still has a festive look.
More waiting, but a bit closer to home. We could have rented a car and driven home by the time we actually got there, but we'd been up since 4 A.M.
Milwaukee from the air.
Coming in to Green Bay.
And we're down.
Left: the term "carousel" makes waiting for baggage seem like a lot more fun than it is.

Below: Matt Dornbush gets a happy welcome home.


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Created 18 January 2008, Last Update 11 June 2020