Iceland Day 3-Grimnses to Kirkjubaejarklausturi

Monday, May 22, 2017

This is our first official full day of traveling the Ring Road and we are driving east along the southern portion of the country. Top on our list today are waterfalls and the Solheimajokull Glacier Walk.
As you can tell from the photos, the weather is a bit different than yesterday with gray skies and a bit of rain and wind...

Not more than 10 minutes in the car and a bit off the road, with a tip from a friend, we found this small but really beautiful fall- Urridafoss

Seljalandsfoss Waterfall- is one of the most visited falls-
 It is 60m high and you can pass behind it on a narrow stone ridge- Prepare to get wet!

...or you climb a small hill and view behind the falls while staying dry!

Even without the blue skies, the landscape is  stunning-

And for this mom, these smiling boys are pretty stunning too-
They add so much to the trip!

Turf houses that look like they are growing out of the mountain... 
OR the mountain is growing over them!

Sheep farms dot the countryside & the majority of the buildings are topped with red roofs

May is high lambing season here & the little ones were so cute to watch-
what you can't see here is the baby's little short tail swiftly wagging back and forth while nursing

We visited Skogar Folk Museum & were able to go inside turf houses that were common among Icelanders until the late 1940's/early 50's.  The houses were very modest dwellings of interconnected rooms & the turf provided great insulation against the harsh climate. In the smaller homes, the bedrooms were built on the second floor directly above the animal pen/barn so that the heat from the animals would rise up and heat the upper floor & room!

Notice the wooden boards on the bunks-
These "rumfjol" kept the warm covers from coming off and the children from falling out.  The boards were carved with a nightly prayer so that the children would not forget to thank God for His blessings- 

R wanted to recreate a photo we took of him with Topi antelope horns in the Serengeti

Very near the museum was Skogafoss- one of the five largest waterfalls in Iceland at 197 feet high.
You could not walk behind this one but climb to the top- which we did-

Next up: The Solhheimajokull Glacier Walk


Solheimajokull is the fourth largest glacier in Iceland.  It is called the shrinking glacier as it has retreated about 1 kilometer in the last decade.  We were fitted with crampons, an ice axe and harnesses to tackle the ice.

First rule of glacier walking: Never go without a guide!  

We were so fortunate to have the trusty Murk to lead us up the mountain-

You may imagine a glacier to be pure white or blue ice but we learned that frozen inside the glacier that is over 900 years old  is ash & pumice from previous volcanic eruptions.

Murk says that you must first do a Viking push up to earn a taste of the glacier waters-
the younger tries it first...

...now the older...

...and finally, the oldest to demonstrate the one-armed Viking pushup!

Ice axes really puncture the ice!

I mentioned earlier that the weather had turned a bit windy... well, it was extremely windy and even though the photos on the glacier represent a good time & some playful moments, it was pretty tense up there on the ice.  It was so windy & precarious that we had to stay in a single file line with the boys no more than an arm's length away in case a gust of wind came along.  At several points during the walk we had to pause, put our ice pick into the glacier and bend down with our shoulder into the wind to hold steady...  We decided it was not safe enough to walk the plateau that would allow us to see the crevasses and other dangerous topography.  Nonetheless, it was an exciting experience on the glacier!

Our final stop of the day was Reynisfjara-
the world famous black beach with it's basalt rock formations.
We had never seen anything like this before!

It is hard to describe the beauty of the formations...

And one final waterfall vista before we stopped for the night-

We have a one night stop over at  Hotel Laki in Kirkjubaejarklausturi just east of the "charming village" of Vik.