Iceland - Day 14 - One Last Hike

Now it was time to leave the other parts of Iceland and head back to Reykjavik.  When we first headed up north we took the main road which went under a long wide fjord via a tunnel.  Reading around I found a recommendation to forego the tunnel and see the beauty of the fjord from the road.  It also afforded us one last hike on a trail at the very upper end of the waterway.

The day started out rainy making the trail nice and wet and MUDDY!

We had to cross several streams along the trail ... but fortunately not this one.  😋

A cave along the side.

The rains done ... time for another rainbow.

 On our way back down.  Due to time constraints we didn't do the whole trail, but enjoyed the portion we did.

Back down in town we found this pretty mural that we'd missed during our previous stay.

After checking into the hotel, we made a trip over to a place called the Blue Lagoon.  It's another naturally heated spring pool but far bigger than any of the others.  Beautifully colored water.  This is actually on the outside of the facility because I didn't take my camera into the swimming area.

So that wrapped it up for Iceland.

Other than the part where we got a tire leak on the way back to the hotel.  I drove the car down and filled it up with air in a local town 10 miles away and hoped for the best.  We had to head towards the airport at 5 AM the next morning and the last thing I wanted to do was change the tire at that freezing cold hour of the morning. 

Fortunately when we woke up the tire still had 14 psi in it and I was able to get to the filling station and tap off the air again, letting us make it to the airport on time.  If you have to change the tire to the spare and don't fix the tire while you have the car they charge you for a brand new tire.  There was no place in Iceland where I was going to get the tire fixed on a Sunday evening so I was glad things worked out.  We'll see if they charge us anyway.

Hope you enjoyed sharing our travels as least partially as much as we've enjoyed sharing them.

Iceland - Lucky Day 13 - Making Due

We're actually on the airplane ride home as I'm posting this and the previous post.  Finally getting caught up after a hectic few days.

We were supposed to have a tour on this day that was going to take us up on a glacier in a big wheeler truck to a cave formation in the glacier.  Unfortunately weather on the mountain prevented us from doing that.  So instead we just found a gravel road going up to a mountain and went exploring on our own.

Always interesting how a bush can take root in a large set of volcano rocks.

The colors of fall.

 

Glacier rivers everywhere you go.

Even gravel roads they keep in really good shape.

African Icelandic sheep.

And the Anglican counter parts.

  

Scaring the birds along the way.

 Then in the afternoon since we couldn't do a glacier cave we decided to do a lava cave.

And then it was down in the cave.

You can see the multiple volcano lava flows that went into making this cave.

Heading out of the cave.  The cave itself is 1.6 km long but the tour covers the first .6 km.

Coming out of the cave it cleared up enough to where we could see the elusive mountain and it's glaciers that evidently didn't want to see us. 😎

Still having a few hours to spend we decided to drive up that mean ol' mountain.  You can tell it hosts a mighty big glacier based on the river size.

Snow field lower on down the mountain.  You can tell it was starting to cloud up again.

One full day left.  Things are quickly wrapping up.

Iceland - Day 12 - Go West Young Couple

OK ... so maybe we're not so young anymore ... but on this day we headed to the west of Iceland again  and then inland a bit to a town named Reykholt.  As always, the sites along the way were spectacular.

The river near where we stayed had an impressive set of falls named Barnafoss.  It's actually 2 sets of falls, the upper ones being a powerful one through the narrows of the canyon.

 

Next the river flowing down from the main upper falls was a bridge to a viewing platform.

First bridged in 1891.  Quite a feat back then.

The second set of falls below are a series of ones coming out of under the lava flow on the right.

A colorful island in the river.

And then it was off to our lodge for the night.  Final staying place other than one more night down near the airport to go home.

Iceland - Day 11 - Seeing the Northern Whales

We had originally planned on doing a plane trip today.  I'm quite sure the canyons and fjords and landscape would look amazing from the air.  We checked first thing in the morning for an afternoon flight but it looked questionable due to mechanical problems.  We checked back an hour later and they said it was a no go ... which we were pretty much to that point on our own accord.  Not sure about riding a plane in the afternoon that had mechanical problems in the morning.

Tina had wanted to do another whale watching trip.  I was a bit hesitant since we'd already done one but once the plane trip was a goner we decided to go ahead and do it.  Both of us were super happy we made that decision.  With apologies to our southern Iceland whale watchers, it's much MUCH better up here in the north.

I'll also apologize ahead of time since this is WAY more pics than I would normally post, but this was just an amazing set of photo opportunities ... and I still deleted 98% of the pics I took.

Dressed up in our sexy wet suits.

Tina on our way out onto the fjord.  Sexy looking as always.

Beautiful cliff lines alone the fjord.

A nice house with a view.

Waterfalls along the way.  (Imagine - waterfalls in Iceland!)

Blow holes in the distance.  We know where we're heading.

And then we saw our first hump-back whale.  (Ignore the girls head in front of me.  It was a rather confined space. 😀 )

Hump backs don't normally hang out together, but we saw a total of 8 different whales who seemed to be hanging together.

Seeing them dive is just an amazing sequence to watch.

A couple more big breathes.

More diving fun.

And again.

And finally, how do you get so lucky as to get two at once.

That's all for today.  So glad we went whale watching again.