The Last Day

Well, Dan slept through the entire battle that waged in the streets and in the air last night. Amazing. 

We woke up and packed up and set off to the Geldingadalir Volcano, which last erupted in 2021 😳. It was pitch black as we drove up to the parking spot at 9:30 AM and started hiking up. Dan decided to turn back after walking quite a ways on the lava rocks, and Cody and I made it 1.2 miles and some number of feet up before we decided that we had run out of time. We had been hoping to get to a viewing point of the caldera. But we saw this instead. 

This was taken at 10:30 AM. 

After leaving the volcano, we drove through miles and miles and miles of what had been lava fields, we made it to the Bridge Between Continents (Brú Milli Heimsálfa), which connects the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. 

Dan’s shot of the sun from the bridge gorge

I regret that I never took geology. Maybe I will audit it at UNCA when I’m old enough. ;)  (Dan - I took a semester from Dr. Rock at Millsaps. Didn't do well. Can I join you?) 

We passed a cemetery with lighted crosses. That was a first  

Then it was on to a lighthouse (I’m sure that Dan has pictures; I was busy changes clothes in the car because I didn’t want to fly in hiking clothes) and to lunch in a gas station. Everything else is closed today, it seems, and we didn’t know what kinds of food the lounge at the airport would have. (Even though they bumped us - well, technically Dan - from business class, we still had access to the lounge.) In the gas station, Dan had the privilege of sitting next to someone who thought that he was James Bond because he said basically that he couldn’t tell Dan what he did for a living but that his “cover job” was XYZ (I had stopped paying attention by that point). 

Once we were settled in the lounge, Dan got a text that he could once again sit in business class. We didn’t actually know that he was the one who was bumped until then and I was arguing that we should flip a coin for who sat in economy. He gallantly insisted that he would do that. Twue wuv. 😍

I’m ready to get home, although that will take another day. Let me take the chance to thank Cody for coming, Bob Weinberg for the Germany scoop, Ted Zoller for taking us to the airport, Barbara DeMerritte for picking us up, Jim Metlicka for picking up drugs, and Micky and Tommy for watering my indoor plant babies. 

~~~

Dan - 

Vicki mentioned a lighthouse. This is it, plus some views of the waters around it.

 

 

 

And the new lighthouse

 

The Old Gardur Lighthouse is located in Iceland on the northern point of the Reykjanes peninsula. It was one of the first lighthouses built in the country, dating back to 1897. The smaller of the two lighthouses was once regarded as one of the best lighthouses in Iceland because it stood low and therefore mist was not a problem. However there was risk of the lighthouse being damaged because of surf and it was sometimes not visible because of sea storm.

Let me add my thanks to those Vicki mentioned, as well as Kit Raines, John Steffan, and Kirk Brown for their recommendations and assistance.

Hey - we will do this again!