Thursday, August 18th, Isafjordur, Iceland

Greetings!

Directly in front of us, almost the whole morning, were rainbows.  We drove up and down the sides of six fjords on Iceland's West Fjords today, and were constantly encouraged to follow their lead.  It was pretty magical.

Along the way,  we encountered the first road signs used in this country.  Cairns (piles of stones) have been constructed all across the country since 1100AD marking the early routes taken.  Usually about four feet tall, and about two hundred yards apart, these markers were used to guide travelers to settlements.

Lately, it seems that hikers and environmental artists have chosen to build tightly-packed straight-sided stone structures which have you wondering who would spend that much time on something few will ever see.

But then the cairns along the road have been there for centuries.

This part of Iceland is where its fishing industry began, and we visited a local museum displaying the history of cod fishing.  They had an excellent video, which followed the exploits of the members of a coastal fishing crew over their 18-hour day (and had me wondering how they captured all of those great segments inside the 6-person oar boat in the winter at sea).

But, as interesting as it was, the collection of accordions donated by a local resident was the hit of the museum.

Lastly, the Arctic Fox Center at Sudavik is the real prize of the day.  Did you know that the reasons they can survive in extreme cold are: 1) they have 20,000 hairs/cubic inch (a cat has 200); they have very small ears and noses; and 3) their unique blood system design utilizes something called "counter current exchange" in the legs. The paws are necessarily cold, but blood can circulate to bring nutrients to the paws without losing much heat from the body. Proximity of arteries and veins in the leg results in heat exchange, so that as the blood flows down it becomes cooler, and doesn't lose much heat to the snow. As the (cold) blood flows back up from the paws through the veins, it picks up heat from the blood flowing in the opposite direction, so that it returns to the torso in a warm state, allowing the fox to maintain a comfortable temperature, without losing it to the snow.

Arctic foxes were the first mammal to occupy Iceland, long before the last Ice Age, and this area has the highest concentration of them in the world.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Thursday, August 18th.

Wednesday, August 17th, Drangsnes, Iceland

Greetings!

Face it.  If I find surf, you're going to see it.  On Iceland's North Coast, near the town of Sauoarkrokur, some nice lefts peeled across the long sandy beach.  The 16-shot sequence is included in today's photo album.

But we didn't come to Iceland to find surf.  Why did we come?  Well, the trip was really all about going to Orkney Island to spend some time at a recent archeological project that you'll read all about in about a week.  But if we're flying over Iceland anyway, why not visit?

Two million of us decided to drop in this year.  From our experience, Germans, Spanish, Chinese, Italians, and French are the easiest to spot (hear).  There are tour busses, but lots of folks have opted for small caravans and 4-wheel drive SUVs to go on some of the rougher roads.

It seems like every sizeable farm has guesthouses, and towns have upgraded their old hotels into 3-star accommodations.  Old barns are now restaurants, with excellent local arctic char, lamb, and other meat selections (horse?).

  But you should come to Iceland for more than a comfortable way to see hot and cold rocks and water.  You should come to see how a country ought to operate.  Now, granted, no one has ever threatened to attack it, so there's no standing army (and very little defense budget).  It has a healthy democracy, that rocks back and forth between conservative and liberal parties in power, but still gets things done.  The taxes aren't too high, and residents get health, education, and retirement benefits.  There's very little unemployment, plenty of small businesses starting and expanding, and not much of a welfare state.

Yes, they're pretty homogeneous.  With 73% Evangelical Lutheran, and 94% native born, they also have a higher net migration rate than we do.  They're healthier (second lowest infant (and 8th lowest maternal) mortality rate in the world, and the 6th highest life expectancy) and 98% of the populace has internet.  In every major measure collected by our CIA, they beat us.

And they believe in trolls and lake monsters, and Norse gods, and celebrate their poets and writers and artists.  What's not to like about Iceland?

To see the photos taken today, click on Wednesday, August 17th.

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. 

Monday, August 15th, Lake Myvatn, Iceland

Greetings!

Today, we went whale watching in the cold waters of northern Iceland.  Krill are plentiful up here at this time, and Humpback whales have just arrived from the Gulf of Mexico for their annual meal.  On our sail, our crew took us to deep water spots where familiar whales returned each year.

Our searching pattern was simple.  Park in their kitchen, and wait for them to surface. Station all passengers around the boat, looking in every direction.  When a whale is spotted (the captain yells "Humpback at 6 O'Clock"), gun the engines to get there quickly, but try not to upset them.

Cut the engines, and hope the whale stays on the surface for a couple of minutes replenishing their oxygen supply before diving again to feed.  Try to fight for a good place to take some pictures, without knocking someone overboard.

Repeat again and again.

The day would have been a much better success if I hadn't left my regular/wide angle lens in the pocket of my rain jacket on board the ship.  If they find it, the crew said they'd mail it to our last hotel in Iceland in Rekjavik.

Before I include the link to today's photos, I wanted to note one more geological anomaly.  The photo to the left looks like a small volcanic crater, but it's not.  When lava flows quickly over a really cold patch of ice, it explodes like a 500 pound bomb.  It leaves a hole locally called a pseudocrater. There are about a dozen of them near our hotel.

To see the photos we took today, click on Monday, August 15th, Myvatn,

Sunday, August 14th, Lake Myvatn, Iceland

Greetings!

Looking out onto the lake at breakfast this morning, I have to admit that I was prepared to be disappointed with the drive.  I had gone on Google Earth last night,  and used Google Trekker to view some key points on the route.  The landscape looked flat and not as exciting as the past few days.  Pat and I had both read every guidebook's section on this area, and I Googled most tourist stops to gain as much background as possible.

Pat gave us our first curve by suggesting we take the long way out of the fjord.  Instead of going back through the tunnel, we'd use the old road out around the peninsula.  It turned out to exactly what was necessary, as it challenged our driving skills (it was mostly a rough dirt road - not one the rental agency recommended our tires could take), and slowed us down enough to appreciate every waterfall, swan colony, and strange rock outfall.  Every adventure needs diversions, and this one set the tone for the day.  We'd make challenges out of every leg, and see things not usually found.

The unusual way out set allowed us to take another unrecommended route to a coastal harbor town reported to have a large puffin colony.  Unfortunately, we discovered half-way down the steep windy dirty road that the harbor was socked in with fog.  Returning cars advised not proceeding, partly because of the poor viewing, and partly the dangerous driving.   We agreed.

In 1875, a huge volcano erupted in the center of Iceland.  Thousand of farms were impacted, with many of their owners calling it quits.  After a long bumpy ride directly toward the epicenter volcano, we visited a group of sod homes first built in 1843, and occupied until 1943 by the same family.  An added bonus was a working watering hose which we were able to clean off the dirt which covered our car.

At a small town a little ways down the road, we were fortunate to encounter two arctic foxes.  Clearly unafraid of tourists, they seemed to be having as much fun as we were. We also walked through a huge lava labyrinth, and checked out a demonstration forest - testing what trees could possibly grow here.

Further on, we found a geothermal hot springs where everyone got to get very muddy shoes, and climb sand dunes as steep as the ones we found in Namibia last year.  I've never seen so many phones on selfie-sticks being tested for their ability to withstand high heat and moisture.

Finally, we saw one of the largest tephra craters in the world.  When a volcano erupts, lava usually forms inside from the molten rock.  Cracks in the volcano allow the lava to ooze out across the landscape.  Now imagine a volcano erupting through a glacier.  In that case, when the lava hits the cold ice, it explodes and sends projectiles (sometimes also called pyroclasts) into the air.  This entire region is full of them, and the crater is on of the biggest sources.  Not a bad day after all, and only in Iceland.

By the way, if you haven't heard, I fixed the problem preventing you all from accessing the photos taken during the last week in previous posts.  Here's a link to the main blog page, where you can go back to each day and click on the links to daily photo albums on Google.  Sorry I messed up, and hope you enjoy the photos.  To see all of the photos taken today, click on Sunday, August 14th.

Saturday, August 13th, Faskrudsfjordur, Iceland

Greetings!

There's only day (tomorrow) when we're not within sight of the coast, so I don't know why I'm feeling like all these great views of mountains into the sea are ending.  It will be a little less exciting without the glaciers and the waterfalls.   But given what we've seen so far, it's hard to imagine the rest of Iceland being any less awesome.

Everywhere we turn is stunning in its natural beauty.  The golden fields of barley and hay, or recently-cut bales, wrapped up in multi-colored plastic awaiting storage.  The brown Icelandic horses enjoying the warm afternoon sun on their backs (I wish I'd taken this photo, but we saw many looking just like it.  I was just too into the big picture).  Several films have used the other-worldly, middle earth scenery here, where high mountains meet uplifted seafloor, glacier-carved hanging valleys drop down to dark-green expansive wetlands and black sandy beaches.

The journey today took us through two mountain tunnels, and into one of the oldest fishing areas of Iceland.  Almost a thousand ships from England and France carrying tens of thousands of sailors worked the fjords along this coast for a hundred years.  Business was so good, that it was reported that African pirates once raided a coastal island nearby, sacked the homes and collected slaves.

One collection we did come across is the largest mineral collection in the world.  Liosbjorg Petra Maria Sveinsdottir began collecting as a child with a rucksack, but her collection grew more rapidly when her fisherman husband retired, and he was able to drive the sleigh in winter to the mounds of rocks she had stored all over their property.

To see all of the photos we took today, click on Saturday, August 13th.

Friday, August 12th, Vatnajokull, Iceland

Greetings!

It's overcast, and we're sitting with our feet up, sipping strawberry vanilla tea and eating sandwiches we stole from the continental breakfast this morning, looking out through a large window to the tongues of three gorgeous glaciers crawling down young craggy mountain valleys.  We're spending a lazy afternoon reading and writing.

This morning, we drove to the local town (Hoft) to visit a combination visitor center/historical museum and Glacier Exhibition.  I'm always on the lookout for importable ideas to improve our own park visitor centers, and this one had some low-cost continuous video displays in cabinets, as well as some easy-to-use, very high-tech, touch screen photo/content screens.  Finally, they had integrated it all into an old wooden harbormaster building, and retained the feel of the time period.  I made sure to collect the emails of those involved.

Tomorrow, we leave the area of volcanic and glacial activity for the far north east of the country.  The coastline is reported to be equally spectacular, but we'll miss these planet-changing forces so close to us.

To see all of the photo taken today, click on: Friday, August 12.