Arrival in the USA

08 Sep 2012 Aurora, Colorado.

Yesterday, after driving from Lincoln and following an uneventful 9 hour flight with BA from London Heathrow to Denver Colorado, we collected our 'tour-bus', a Grand Caravan 7-seater, from the airport and drove to Aurora, a town that ajoins Denver.  The whole journey went very smoothly although it was a long day.

Leaving Lincoln shortly after 9 in the morning, we headed down the A1 towards London.  The traffic was light and there were no hold-ups so we arrived in the St Albans area after 2 hours.  In order to waste a little time, we 'hung around' in Sainsburys restaurant for an hour before continuing to Heathrow.  We arrived shortly before one-o-clock and were met by our driver.  For the first time, we used a 'meet and greet' service for car-parking and found to be very easy.  Turn up at the airport, unload your bags and abandon the car to a driver who takes the car to an off-airport carpark.  Hopefully, when we get back, a driver will meet us at the airport with the car!

We met our fellow travellers in Terminal 5 and quickly checked our bags in and headed through security, a largely painless experience.  We'd  bought sandwiches at Sainsburys, so found a quiet corner to settle down and wait and eat lunch.  The flight was delayed for 45 minutes (apparently because the aircraft had arrived late from Rio de Janiero), but we were soon onboard a Boeing 777.  Hopes of an uncrowded flight were quickly dashed and we shared our row with a largish gent from Sheffield.  The flight route took us north over UK and out over the Atlantic, passing south of Greenland before making landfall at Baffin Island.  From there, we headed southwest over Hudson Bay and into northern Ontario.  The clouds which had been below us for most of the route, cleared as we flew south and we were able to see the ground for the rest of the journey over Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Nebraska and eventually Colorado.  As we were landing, the local time was 1920 and it was getting dark.

Immigration was painless, we didn't have to fill in the usual form, only the customs declaration, and weren't subjected to fingerprinting or photographing as we had 'previous' entries into the USA.  Having raided an ATM, we caught the shuttle-bus to the rental car depot and after a few signatures were told to go and choose any vehicle in row F!  All were mini-vans and we picked a white Grand Caravan 7-seater with 7000 miles on the clock.  As it was dark, we didn't initially appreciate the finer points of this vehicle such as the automatic tailgate and side, sliding-door, opening at a touch of a button!  After a 20 minute drive down the airport boulevard, the I-70 and the I-225, we arrived at the hotel in Aurora just off East Illife avenue.  After checking in, we walked a couple of hundred yards back to a Ruby Tuesdays restaurant and had a late supper and a beer.  We reckoned we'd been on the go for about 24 hour.

Follwing a good nights sleep, we had a late start and enjoyed the complimentary breakfast at the hotel before exploring the finer points of our 'tour-bus'.  We discovered a huge storage area under the floor (used when you fold the middle row of seats down) and lots of other areas to squirrel away our maps, books etc.

We then headed out and drove south down the I-225 and I-25 to Castle Rock, a town about 20 miles south of Denver.  The purpose of our visit was clothes shopping at the Outlet Centre.  The drive down was pleasant with views of the Rockies to the west and we arrived as the shops opened.  Several hours later we left with various bags of new clothes.

Ken took the wheel for the first time for the journey back to Aurora and he quickly discovered that driving in the USA for the first time can be quite daunting.  Road signs, direction signs and driving customs take some getting used to, especially 4-way stop signs.  He quickly settled in to driving, but it was a bit of baptism of fire as the roads were really busy!

After a foray into a Supermarket to purchase a coolbag, water and snacks for travelling, we returned to the hotel to relax for the afternoon.