Water, Rocks, and Bubbling Mud

Day 3 in Iceland! It’s really hard to believe that just two full days ago we were waiting for the plane in SFO. We’ve started to get the hang of Iclandic adventuring at this point; last night we just pulled over to the side of the road and had “camp” set up in less than 5 minutes. Oh and we slept for a full 8 ½ hours! Woo! Take that jet lag.

Today was similar to yesterday. We drove along the Ring Road (an 800 mile circuit that surrounds most of the country) and saw beautiful things.

Our first stop was to Skútustaðagígar. We went on a short walk through pseudocraters, by a beautiful lake with picturesque houses in the background and about 10 million flies.

  

  

We stopped by the road at these sweet rock formation pillar things. And then went to Dimmuborgir, which is actually known for its sweet rock formation things; it’s a large area of crazy shaped lava fields.

  

Onwards to the next site – sulfuric hot springs. The water was some of the bluest water we’ve seen, and a very different shade of blue than most water. We could walk into the steam coming out of it and get completely engulfed. It was so thick that you couldn’t be seen from the outside and couldn’t see anything but white from the inside.

  

Just four minutes down the road was the Hverir geothermal area with this cool bubbling mud. Like we’ve said, you can’t really go anywhere in this country without seeing another amazing thing.

We had a CRAZY small world experience running into Alicia Dansker (Monisha’s fellow ex Superfly) at the naturally heated hot spring! She walked up to Nolan and asked if he was wearing a Stanford Bloodthirsty jacket. This came as a shock to Nolan; not only was someone coming up to talk to him in Iceland, but they knew enough about Ultimate Frisbee to recognize the Stanford Bloodthirsty logo. We exchanged notes about our trips so far as we were driving the Ring Road in opposite directions.

Then two more of the coolest waterfalls we’ve ever seen, Dettifoss and Selfoss. Dettifoss in particular was awe striking; it’s the largest volume foss in Iceland (we believe). Standing right next to it humbles you. This is a waterfall powerful enough that the mist collecting on the rocks downwind form their own waterfalls.

  

That was the last official sight, but here are a couple more roadside stops we couldn’t resist.

  

And we made our way into one of the cutest towns there is, Seyðisfjörður. Here (or near here) we will spend the night, and are currently in a café treating ourselves to a half pear blue cheese walnut pesto half pineapple onion pepperoni black pepper pizza. Yum.

  

By the way, we thought you might like to know that we still like each other! We're getting along quite well, which is a good thing since we still have over three months traveling together.