Ice Ice Baby                                  

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My flight from San Francisco to Iceland took me over northeast Canada and Greenland.  There were some gorgeous views, and I went a little crazy with the pictures...but come on, it was the beginning of a big trip and I was excited.

May 22: The flight there - Northern Canada

Northern Canada was full of snowy mountains and icy rivers	Some cool looking mountains	A frozen river	Closeup of the same river
Another closeup	A similar river with the wing in view	A frozen canyon	A cool winding frozen river
We reached the coast of the Atlantic or Hudson Bay or something	There were lots of big ice sheets floating in the water	Here's a closeup of some ice sheets	There were also zones of little ice specks...icebergs, maybe?
The icebergs followed the currents in the water; here's a little spiral of icebergs	Here's an enormous spiral of icebergs packed so dense you can barely see the water

Still flying there - Greenland

We approached the snowy west coast of Greenland	Ice that looks like it's flowing towards the coast	Rock formations on the coast	A very blue lake near the coast
Iceflow into the lake	Mountains near the coast	Snowy hills near the coast	Most of the interior of Greenland looked like this: a huge white plain that was so bright you could barely look at it

So, uh, you may be asking where all the ice is	It turns out that Iceland looks like Arizona with a coast	Don't be fooled by its appearance, though -- it was frickin' freezing there, even in late May
So maybe you've heard that "Iceland is green, and Greenland is icy."  Well, from my pictures, Iceland looks more brown, but Greenland is definitely icy.  A nice Icelandic lady sitting next to me on the plane explained:  Apparently the first explorers to reach Iceland arrived at the north of the island, where it really is icy, so they mistakenly named it "Iceland."  Awhile later, after people had established some settlements in Iceland, a guy named Eric the Red made the wrong people mad and was forced to leave the island.  He sailed off the discovered a new island which really was covered in ice.  But he wanted to make the Icelandic people jealous, so he decided to give the impression that he had found a paradise and named it "Greenland."

Rocky plain with lots of little frozen lakes	Diagonal rock formations; I think this one is cool	A rocky, icy river	Detail of an icy river
Rock formations on a coastline	An icy river dividing in two through some hazy clouds	Icy mountains