Iceland, Day 4

We woke up Friday morning with plans to explore the country. The weather forecast was not good. Storms with severe wind and horizontal rain. Tough... we were going anyway!!! We packed up the car and headed out.

The first stop was Pingvillar, the site of the first Parliament in Iceland. It was awful. The rain was so horrid that we couldn't see. I was pretty miserable. We walked and saw some babbling brooks and took a look at where the tectonic plates split (pretty darn cool....) and got right back in the car.

one of the two tectonic plates (behind paul)

We drove a while praying for better weather and God provided. We reached Geysir which is an amazing place where tons of natural geysers come up out of the ground all the time. You are just walking along and up comes a 20-30 foot gush of water. It was so hard to believe all of this was natural and without pumps and prodding. There was a bigger geyeser in the early 1900's that rose to 80 or 90 feet but that one has been dormant for a while.


We were however disappointed with the restaurant (which served only burritos, pizza and hamburgers -- very Icelandic) and the gift shop (see below for authentic Icelandic garb).


Back in the car we headed to Gullfoss, the biggest waterfalls in Iceland. It has a similar feel to Niagra Falls but I would venture to say it is much bigger and wider and longer and multi-tiered. The other great thing is that it is all just natural. There are no stores, no big fences, no boats charting expensive trips. Anyone can go and get as close as they want... heck you could jump in if you want. There is no security or anything. It's just nature. Radical concept.



Noah snuggled in for a nice long nap while we continued eastward on the island. I wanted to make a stop at Skalhalt, an old religious community that had historic significance in the history of Iceland. I loved it. The mosaic of Jesus on the front wall was made out of 1X1 tiles and was much more breathtaking than the photos show.



Moving onward we headed far east on the southern coast to the town of Vik. We had hoped to see puffins here as this is the most likely place to see them, but we were never sure if the birds flying overhead were puffins or not. What we did see were the amazing black sand beaches and the incredible finger rock formations.

Noah was so happy all day because we kept seeing rocks and water -- a two year old's dream vacation.

We headed back eastward along the souther coast, stopping at two more places... the first one was home to the basalt church pipe rock formations:

The second, draeholey was home to these awesome rocks and coves.


We had to accomplish Paul's goal, which was to touch a glacier. There was one within our reach so we drove for a little while on a dirt road to find it and we did!! We had to go about 800 m on foot and we were able to touch and stand on a real glacier. The eerie part was there was no one there and we could have completely died and no one would have known.


Our last stop on this marathon day was at Skogar Falls, a huge waterfall in Southeast Ireland. Again, no fences, no stores... just stunning nature.

And of course, we passed a million sheep and a million more mini-waterfalls.


We got home at about 10:30 that night. It was our biggest day and Noah did his best this day.. as long as he could take rocks from every place we went!!!! There is so much more to see and do, we'll just have to go back!