MINI ADVENTURES

"He is truly wise

  who's travelled far

  and knows the ways of the 

                                       world.

  He who has travelled

  can tell what spirit

  governs the men he meets."

Today we hit the road running and had many small adventures.  First we drove to the volcano area called Eyjafjalljokull, which had a major eruption in 2010.  We meet a farm family that lived directly below this volcano, but survived major destruction because the wind happend to be blowing away from them.  They still had rivers and mountains of mud land on their land,but none of their family or livestock was killed.  They made a very good "real time" video and  showed it to us.  It was quite well done and they have made a little store to sell volcanic artifacts and are doing quite well, now.

Then we went to the huge Skogafoss waterfall where Steve and I climbed the steep stairs to the top.  It is a beautiful area and the main area for most of the old Norse Sagas.  There have been alot of movies filmed here too.  It is so easy to imagine the Vkings living and trampling on this green landscape.

A short distance from the falls is the Skogar Folk Museum.  At first, I was thinking this would be a dull same-o, same-o museum tour.  Boy, was I wrong.  We had a very engaging docent who really knew his stuff.  He also had an operatic voice and sang some of the oldest hymns in the history of the Christians in this area.   2 hours went by very fast and then we had lunch in the museun cafe.

After lunch, we ventured to black sand beaches of Reynisfjara.  It was cold and windy, but we beach combed and walked about the basalt formations.  This area is always featured in "Viking boat landing scenes" in the movies.  In truth, many fishing boats were launched in these cold waves.  The old Norse fishermen were unbelievably tough and survived brutal conditions to survive.  Impressive.

From sea to mt, we drove up  a bumpy gravel road until we came tomthe approach of the Solheimajokall Glacier, where we hiked a bit until we came to the edge of this "sliding glacier".  Steve wanted to actually spend some time walking on this ragged old icey area, and we found a trail to get onto the glacier that wasn't too steep.  So we spent some time on this giant before heading to one more adventure.

One more BIG waterfall called Seljalandfoss beckoned.  This waterfall had a muddy path that took hikers around it and wound into the back of the fall.  The trail wasn't too hard, but it was wet!  Like walking through giant sprinklers that were on full blast.  We got drenched and I was so glad it was almost time to head back.

Couldn't resist a drenched selfie!