Day 5

Hello All,

The trip is half over.  It's hard to believe.  I really don't want it to end.  It was another spectacular day except for breakfast.  Tiring of luncheon meats and cheeses every day, we were thrilled to see eggs and breakfast sausages.  Alas, they were inedible.  We started with a long drive but soon, of course, we saw a waterfall which was fairly close to rte 1 so we pulled over.  Here is what we saw.



It was a fairly short stop. Not 5 minutes later, this happened.

This led to my favorite Rebecca quote of the day.  "You know every 5 minutes we see a waterfall which makes me wonder why the f&$# we bothered with the last one."

The rest of our two hour drive was uneventful but filled with ever more strange landscapes.  Rebecca took a few shots out of the window only because I didn't know how I was going to describe things.  My friend David Smart told me that Iceland was like being on the moon but with more sheep.  Well, we found that part without any sheep.

Soon enough, things began to change again.  First, we saw more stacking  These went on for miles and miles.  I would really like to know who did these.  We were 100 miles from anything in one direction and 40 miles from anything in the other.  We hadn't seen a man made object for all day except for cars.

Soon after... this.

More lava fields.  It's hard to express this but when you see the pictures you might think of dirt or smoothness or something but believe me when I say, this is jagged hard rock.  Nothing gives.  It's like iron.  It's really something.  

I took a picture of the ring road while we were stopped to give you a good view of it.  The drops on either side at this point are about 11 feet.

Since it was easy to dip between rocks and we had been on the road for a long time, we decided to tend to a bit of business.  This is not an unusual thing to do in Iceland since places are so far apart.

Our first official stop was to be Europe's most powerful waterfall - Dettifoss - but I missed the turn and we ended up seeing this.  I'm just going to put pictures and videos.  This, by the way was right after the lava fields and so everything just instantly changed.

It was all quite amazing and truly horrible smelling.  The sulfur I had smelled for the last 5 days had not been pleasant but had been tolerable.  This was stomach turning. 

After we finished there we back tracked to see Dettifoss.  On the way, Rebecca decided to get a snow fix.  

At the parking lot, it looked like this and this is what the walk to the falls was like.  You tell me where it is?  Oh, and it's straight ahead.

Eventually, this happens.

It's really incredible.  I think Gullfoss on the first day was more beautiful but the power of this is really something.

Another 3/4 of a mile or so up stream is Selfoss.  

It was a lot of walking over rocky trails but it was flat. After the day in the car that we had the day before it was nice to be out in nature some more.  Once again, it was warm and mostly sunny.

On our way to our next stop we found some more geo thermal activity but this time it was all connected to a power plant.

All through the mountains were pods where the heat was collected and pipes took it to the station.

Up the hill from the power plant we took a wonderful steep walk around a couple of craters with the most beautiful water.

There were people swimming in this one which I thought was cool until I got down there and realized it wasn't heated.  Turns out, they were just crazy!

When you can't bury things and a pipe has to run across a road, here is the fix.

This was on the side of the road about a mile from the main road.  It was putting out wonderfully warm water.  Turns out, the country has better water pressure, even out in the middle of nowhere, than my house.

We drove on to Lake Myvatn which is our stopping place for 2 nights.  The name means "lake of midges" and the place lives up to its name.  I'm thinking of changing the translation to "Don't stay here for 2 nights" though, I have to say, the room we have is nice.  As with so much of the trip, it's hard to explain just how thick the midges are. I will say that driving around the lake it sounded like it was raining - that's how many were hitting the windshield.  You can buy at the gas station, and people wear, netting around their heads.  I'm determined not to wash the car until the end of the trip because it's fun to watch it become completely bug encrusted and brown but last night I had to break down and scrub the windshield.

We're staying at a cow and sheep farm in a nice cabiny thing.  The restaurant looks into the milking shed.

It was only about 4:00 and we knew that if we rested we would find it hard to get up again so we decided to go to Hverfjall Crater.  It was a very tough slog up on loose gravel and the ring, which we walked around is about a mile and a half.  The diameter is just over half a mile.  There are smaller craters around it.  It was dusty and incredibly windy and exhausting but it was all worth it.

I will say, the views were spectacular!

Again, we saw some more stacking.

So we did some of our own.

This is us at full wind!

We were done - or undone as it were.  We headed back and straight to dinner, our mouths and hair full of dust.  I had braised lamb shanks and Rebecca had arctic char.  They were both really good.  To drink we each had a schnapps.  Hers was flavored with a local berry called a Crowberry.  It was lovely.  Mine was flavored with a local candy called something I don't remember and it was Robitussin.  We also split a beer as this is the first place we've seen with beer on tap.

The restaurant left the doors open so the midges wouldn't feel left out.  This was the scene by my chair.

After dinner we decided to treat ourselves with some luxury.  There is a place nearby knows as "The blue lagoon of the north."  It's an enormous geo thermal bath.  There were various temperatures throughout and a separate trough-like bath with water which was 105 degrees.  The setting was beautiful and it really was relaxing.

I have a feeling we'll splurge on it again tonight.  And that is Day 5.  

R