4 Oct 2015

This morning Robin and I were picked up by Reykjavik Excursions for a 6 hour tour of Thingvellir (Þingvellir), Gullfoss and Geysir.  It was raining this morning and by the time we got to Thingvellir National Park (31 miles east of Reykjavik) the rain was coming down pretty good and the wind was blowing hard .  It was so disappointing because it was very pretty.  There were some good shots but with the cold vertical rain it was impossible to take our cameras out.  Robin got a few shots with her iPhone.  The vegetation was really amazing; pink, yellow, gold, dark pine green, light lichen green with so much texture.  I don’t know what the plants were but they were wearing their fall colors and did look so beautiful!  Þingvellir – literally “Parliament Plains” and was named such because the Alþing Parliament met at this location from about 930 to 1798.  It is in this area that the Atlantic Divide cuts through Iceland.  We crossed from America to Europe and back today!  Pretty cool.  You can see deep fissures in the land where the two plates are moving away from each other at a rate of about 2 cm a year!  It is dangerous to walk through the landscape as you can fall into one of these cracks.  There are wooden footpaths that you must stay on.

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Our next stop was at Gullfoss.  It is a beautiful waterfall, spectacular and again it was impossible to take a proper picture.

Our final stop of the tour was at Geysir.We did see small geysir blow and there were many areas where steam was rising from the ground.  There were some mineral pools as well.  I had never seen any geothermal activity before so it was pretty interesting.  Robin says it’s not nearly as good as those at Yellowstone.

The trip back was damp, foggy windows, wet cloths, poor visibility due to the weather.  We were glad to get back to our room and dry off and relax before meeting up with our photo tour group.

The husband and wife team leading our tour (Neal and Charlotte) are very nice.  There are 10 people signed up for the tour, only two of them are men.  I was somewhat surprised by that.  We had introductions and a brief description of the places we plan to visit before heading down the street to a very nice dinner at a seafood buffet.