Dagur tvö

 Day two:

After a much-needed good night’s rest, we hit the road bright and early this morning. It was amazing to wake up and see real fresh powdery snow covering the ground. While we were sleeping, about 2 inches of snow layered the ground. We had to wait for the car to head up because the windows were covered with snow and ice!

Our first stop of the day was at the geyser for which all geysers get their namesake. The original geyser is dormant, however, there is a geyser next to it, Strokkur, that erupts every 5-10 minutes. It was amazing to hear the boiling water and know that in a few seconds that steaming pond-looking thing was going to blow! We talked about sinter, which forms when hot geothermal fluids cool rapidly. The sun was very nice at this stop. The wind from yesterday was gone, but it was a lower temperature. So the sun rays hitting you were very pleasant.

At this point, we could see that the weather was on its way to being pretty bad. The things we had planned to see were either buried in snow, or the roads were so bad we couldn’t drive on them. The clouds all day were dark, and Dr. Barineau pointed out that our clouds in Georgia look the same, it’s just that we can’t see the scale of the clouds at home because of the trees. That is something very interesting about Iceland, there aren’t really trees. You could drive for miles and see about a handful. There’s also no wildlife really. We’ve seen a couple of birds in a handful of places. The weird thing is that they have horses the same way we have cows in Georgia. But a lot of Iceland reminds me of a desert covered with snow. It’s just flat and barren in a lot of it, with ginormous mountains on the horizon.

After driving a while, Jacob got a text from the Icelandic police warning him about Heckla, an active intermediate volcano that does technically have the potential to erupt. This volcano produced most of the outcrops we stopped to see. We saw mafic fluvial sedimentary structures that had a few quartz crystals and amygdaloidal basalt flows which most likely came from Heckla.

Our last stop before we got to the hotel was another waterfall, Seljalandsfoss. It was beautiful! The cliff the waterfall was on was a wave-cut cliff and showed us how up far the ocean used to come. The funniest part of today is when we noticed water shooting up at a weird angle on the smaller waterfall, and I asked if it was just hitting a rock at a weird angle. So Dr. Barineau said let’s check it out followed but if it’s something like a water hose I’m going to be upset. I’ll bet you could guess what it was, a water hose! It was hilarious.

As a little side note about Icelandic culture: public bathrooms are very interesting in Iceland. The restaurant we ate at the first day didn’t have one and the two gas stations we stopped at you had to pay to use them, but it was on the honor system. The first gas station was fun because when we were waiting in line to buy something to use the bathroom, there were Icelandic children in front of us just being kids but speaking Icelandic very loudly and running around. They were adorable and were making me laugh when one of them went over to what I assume is a lottery ticket machine and just got tickets. Icelandic people do speak English fairly well, and at this point, I’m a little embarrassed I don’t know any Icelandic phrases. I’m trying to learn hello, please, and thank you. While they do speak English, you can’t help but feel a little judged by them when you ask questions. I don’t blame them though, I’ve asked some fairly obvious things! I also like the lifted trucks you occasionally see with massive snow tires. It makes sense here, however, lifted trucks don’t make sense in Georgia. And I’ve learned I love the snowplows. If I lived here as a kid, I could definitely see myself wanting to be a snowplow driver.

Now it was time to head to the hotel, which wasn’t far at all from the last waterfall. It was an amazing hotel. The staff was so friendly, the rooms were nice, and the atmosphere of the lobby/hang-out area was great. For dinner, we had lamb soup. It was good! The taste was great, but I had to tell myself it was ham because I didn’t not like the look of it. I would order it again though. It was so cool to be eating dinner in a room where every group at every table was from a different country. You could hear so many languages at once. And the shower was much nicer than the last because the temperature wasn’t ridiculous. You could get a happy medium between boiling and freezing. As I was headed back to my room from my shower, the kind woman who runs the hotel had her coat on and told me that she didn’t want to wake “the boys” but that the northern lights were out. When I tell you I was running, I was running to grab a coat and to call Jacob. I was out in the freezing Icelandic air with wet hair, pajama pants, and just my coat searching for the Northern Lights. At the hotel, we were able to see a thin line, but the clouds were in the way and the moon was very bright. So the three of us made a plan to get up around 3:00 am to drive somewhere to look at them. But as soon as I got in bed, Jacob texted me and said we were going right then. We got out cold-weather gear and hit the road trying to find a quiet spot. I felt a little like a storm chaser, the lights dance through the sky and go in phases from looking like streaky clouds to very vibrant colors moving like slow dragons flying through the sky. There aren’t enough words in the English language to describe just how mesmerizing the lights are. I could’ve cried just watching them dance, I couldn’t imagine how they could be more beautiful with a darker moon and no clouds. Dr. Barineau says we might have a better chance of seeing them on Wednesday, so we’ll see if this night could be topped.