Tuesday, August 16th, Skagafjoradur, Iceland

Greetings!

This morning, we backtracked east to two places that bad roads had kept us from visiting yesterday.  The first is a 10 km wide volcano which has erupted nine times between 1974 and 1984.  On the north side of the caldera is an explosive crater, 300 meters in diameter with a green lake inside.  The western side of Krafla is a geothermal field which provides ten percent of Iceland's geothermal power.  The closest one can get to a huge chunk of the Earth's core, visitors are especially asked to stay on the trails to avoid the heated ground.

Then we drove to the largest waterfall in Europe.  Even though Iceland is still trying to get into the EU, they seem to welcome accepting this massive flow of ice water.

One the way back, we stopped at the local auto repair shop.  One of our tires had a slow leak, and our onboard alert system had been making a fit for the last two days.  We filled it up yesterday at a gas station, but it became clear something was wrong.  Removing the tire, he pulled a 1-inch long house nail from it, reamed out the hole, and inserted a plug covered with superglue.

Above 66 degrees north, near the Arctic Circle, there is very little land left to see and photograph. As our retrace and fixit adventures took the morning and early afternoon, we had little time to complete the drive from Myvatn to the Skagafjordur fjord to our next guesthouse.  The landscape as we circumnavigated the fjords and mountains along the northern Iceland coast was mind-blowing, and warranted lots of stops and photos.  We were limited, and you'll just have to take our word for it.  We are including a panorama of photos in the Google album taken from our porch at the guesthouse.

To see those photos, and all of the rest, click on Tuesday, August 16th.