EURO TRAVEL - K AND A

 First Day

 We left Phoenix in the morning for Denver to change planes for DC Dulles.  Beautiful thunderstorms over much of Colorado - plane weaved its way around the giant mountains of clouds, sometimes skirting them and sometimes forced through them.  Huge updrafts made for exciting ride for some, terrifying for others (Amanda).  Typical of the Denver airport in summer, it was packed with a lot of weather delayed flights.

Clear skies   Once we left Denver an hour late, the skies were clear over Nebraska and Kansas and Iowa.  The symmetry of the perfect squares of farmland for as far as the eye could see is always amazing.  One has to make note of the thousands of wind turbines strung across the states.  To the north maybe 20 to 50 miles away was a string of thunderstorms - like some catastrophe movie looking down from space  - cylones of clouds stacked in dense columns often rising higher - much higher than the 36,000 ft of our plane (Airbus 320?).

As the sun went down behind us in the west we approach Lake Erie to the north and we start to descend through several layers of lower storms.  Several more exciting bounces - like gremlins slamming the aircraft with hammers on the outside.  Thrilling.  Soon darkness enveloped us with only the wing lights bouncing light off the surrounding clouds and light rain creating Hollywood special effects glittering and glows.  Finally we can see intermittently lights of towns and roads below as we descend over the Shenandoah valley, disappearing and reappearing as lower clouds obscure them.  At last we are below even the lowest of storm clouds near Dulles and the lights of Fairfax and Vienna and in the distance Washington D.C.

The runways look wet as we touch down.  Sure enough it is raining lightly (after all day downpours) as we exit the plane.  A 30 minute Uber ride out into the dark countryside of Leesburg and ....it's raining as I shlept the bags out of the car and through the yard of our AirBnB - the wind blowing the water from the tree leaves.  Arrived at last and a hot coffee.