Yesterday (Thanksgiving!) was spent on an all-day tour which took me back out into the nothingness, across the vaguely lunar mostly colorless landscape, and onto a glacier for a walk on the ice. Along the way, we crossed Iceland's longest river which supports five
hydroelectric plants. Icelanders get their water not from rivers though, but from deep groundwater. The water is processed only by natural filtration though the lava rock,and piped into
homes -- at no cost; people only pay for the electricity to heat water, cold
water is free. After crossing the river and passing the farms, some with ponies and sheep, and after a quick stop for lunch, we arrived at the glacier. We got geared up with crampons and ice axes and trudged on up. The guide gave us the run-down on the geologic happenings and history and we wandered around taking care not to plunge to our deaths by falling into a crevasse.
 |
| Notice tour group, center bottom third, for scale. |
 |
| lunch - why aren't all hotdogs wrapped in bacon? |
Dinner was a delicious lobster soup in a yurt which was conveniently located next to the ghost museum and the troll and elf museum. They were both ridiculously hokey but quite hilarious after a glass of wine, and the visit seemed like a perfectly appropriate way to cap a day of glacier-walking and lobster soup-eating, which I have to say, beats turkey and mashed potatoes any day.
Yesterday (Thanksgiving!) was spent on an all-day tour which took me back out into the nothingness, across the vaguely lunar mostly colorless landscape, and onto a glacier for a walk on the ice. Along the way, we crossed Iceland's longest river which supports five 
hydroelectric plants. Icelanders get their water not from rivers though, but from deep groundwater. The water is processed only by natural filtration though the lava rock,and piped into
homes -- at no cost; people only pay for the electricity to heat water, cold 
water is free. After crossing the river and passing the farms, some with ponies and sheep, and after a quick stop for lunch, we arrived at the glacier. We got geared up with crampons and ice axes and trudged on up. The guide gave us the run-down on the geologic happenings and history and we wandered around taking care not to plunge to our deaths by falling into a crevasse.
Dinner was a delicious lobster soup in a yurt which was conveniently located next to the ghost museum and the troll and elf museum. They were both ridiculously hokey but quite hilarious after a glass of wine, and the visit seemed like a perfectly appropriate way to cap a day of glacier-walking and lobster soup-eating, which I have to say, beats turkey and mashed potatoes any day.
