Our trip today was a little longer as we wanted to make up time from the short day yesterday.
In the morning when we awoke, the snow was quite far down on the hills beside us. Some of the people who came in cars decided it was better to sleep inside their cars, but a few hardy souls slept in their tents.
We headed back out to the coast and picked up Highway 1 at Selfoss. The landscape was beautiful. It was at times bleak and barren. Sometimes it reminded me of Newfoundland, if Newfoundland had no trees. Sometimes it felt like we were up in Northern BC looking at the Nisga’a lava beds, other times we could have the prairies without the fields of crops. Another it would remind me of the coast of Oregon just before California.
As we moved further east we saw many waterfalls.
If you look at the map at the beginning of the post you can see the size of the glacier. Vatnajökull Is the largest glacier in Europe by volume and almost the largest in area. It has been used in quite a few movies include two of the James Bond series. It is 7900 kilometres squared and averages 380-400 metres in thickness
There are lots of one lane bridges on the route. A lot of them are singing bridges (those in Kitimat will know what I am talking about).
We saw lots of other people travelling in motor homes and lots of camping rentals by others too. This one is for you PeterBee.
The weather today included a lot of overcast. However, it seems in Iceland you only need to wait 5 minutes if you want the weather to change. We had both snow and rain today. And wind. Always wind. We passed a guy pushing his bicycle into the wind because the wind was too strong – it was downhill. You can see the effect of the wind in some of the pictures.
Icelandic Sheep and Horses were plentiful. Icelandic horses are pony sized and live long and healthy lives. Partially because no other horse breeds are permitted to be imported and no horse that has been exported may be returned, which keeps the disease low. Icelandic sheep are the opposite, they are larger than most other northern sheep. They were introduced to Iceland in the ninth or tenth century and, like the horses, other breeds are not permitted on Iceland.
One thing to note if you are travelling here – remember to bring your debit card as well as a credit card. Self-serve gas kiosks don’t take credit card – they need a debit card with at least a 3-digit pin.
The notices for picnic signs were the universal sign of a picnic table and tree, but there were no trees at the picnic sites.
We are here at Höfn for the night. Even though we are protected by other motor homes on each side, and a berm in front of us, the winds are still strong enough to make the trailer rock. The weather app indicated that the winds would be 45 km per hour with gusts to 75. Well, the “gusts” are pretty steady.
