I went to Hawaii for an oral argument in a case and stayed four extra days. The argument was in Honolulu, then I flew over to Kauai for the vacation. It was a nice laid back vacation, with only one story of note. My first full day on Kauai I planned to go for a hike. I woke up early to leave, as the hike was about an hour drive from my hotel, but it was raining. After a couple of hours of wondering what to do, it let up a bit, and it looked ok to the west, so I [View Full Entry]

---

---

On Thursday, we returned to Reykjavik, where we would stay for the remainder of the trip. Thursday evening and Friday were spent relaxing in the local hot pools, eating out, walking around the city, and visiting the National Museum of Iceland. We also walked over to the sports center to pick up our registration packet for the annual Reykjavik Marathon on Saturday. We were both signed up to run the 10 km race. Most of our hiking group was part of a larger group that was gathering in Reykjavik to run in the races associated with the Reykjavik Marathon in memory [View Full Entry]

---

---

Emstrur to Þórsmörk Day four was a long hike, and every time we thought we were surely getting close, it always seemed as if there were a little more to go. We saw the only trees of the hike at the end, going through a birch forest with trees about 10 feet high. Then we arrived in beautiful Thorsmork, with the hut at the base of the glacier. Waiting on us there were two legs of lamb, several fish filets, lots of potatoes, salad, wine, and beer thanks to our Icelandic hosts, who had the feast shipped to us at the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Álftavatn to Emstrur Day 3 was mainly interesting for the side trips at the beginning and end of the day. We started by climbing a small mountain next to the hut to the 360 degree views at the top. There we signed the notebook left for all of those who make the climb. At the end of the day we did a short hike from the hut out to a canyon. The wind was blowing like crazy but we stood on the lip and took pictures anyway. In between, we hiked through a volcanic ash desert. [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hraftinnusker to Álftavatn Day 2 may have been the hardest day. We had to cross a series of ice-filled crevices, but the ice was melting in many places. Then we had to climb a steep mountainside, then descend the other side on a trail of loose rocks to the valley below. Still, we were a good ways from our hut (and in fact had to hike past what looked like a nice hut, and go another couple of miles to get to our hut, including our first stream crossing. It was a long day, but at least at the end we [View Full Entry]

---

---

Landmannalaugar to Hraftinnusker We woke early in the morning to catch the bus from Reykjavik to Landmannalaugar, the starting point of our hike. It was a four hour bus ride and we arrived around lunch time. We had a nice lunch at Landmannalaugar, and of course I managed to cut my thumb slicing cheese. Already injured! But it wasn't too bad, so I slapped a band-aid on it and our group of 13 set out on our four day trek. The first day of the hike has the most elevation gain at something like 500 meters. But what they don't [View Full Entry]

---

---

Iceland isn't as far away as you think. It's about a six hour flight from Baltimore, and we took a red-eye, arriving around 6:30 am local time. I woke up as the plane was descending and looked out on a bright blue morning. A layer of clouds several thousand feet below us obscured the ground. As we descended into the clouds, I watched intently out the window, waiting for that first view of land as we broke the cloud cover. Then we landed. In the clouds. Which turned out to be fog. I never saw the ground until we were about [View Full Entry]

---

---

If you've tried to access our page in the last few days, I'm sure you've noticed that you couldn't. The travelblog server crashed and we lost our blog entries, but not the photos. We were able to recover all but one through Google Caches, and that one we have the text saved elsewhere so it should be up soon. It took us several days to notice the problem with the blog because we've been busy preparing for our trip to Iceland. We've got tons of gear for our four-day hike, and although our training may have slacked a bit for the [View Full Entry]

---

---

We woke on our last day of vacation tired from ten days of going non-stop, eager to fill our day with what we could, and dreading our return to the workaday world. We slept too long to get the free continental breakfast so we got a bagel and coffee from the coffee shop attached to the hotel. Somewhat revived, we walked over to the Burke Museum on the campus of the University of Washington. It had a couple of interesting exhibits, one on the history of the land we now call Washington from its time under water to the present day, [View Full Entry]

---

---

Jerry Seinfeld is the Devil. His show ruined my life. I can hardly go a single day without something happenening that causes me to make a lame Seinfeld reference. This day was no exception. The Shangri-La hotel, nice as it is, is situated next to a 24-hour gas station. The shades on the windows of the Shangri-La might as well not be there. The light poured through the window, keeping me up most of the night. So, of course, it didn't take me long (it was probably before we left the Shangri-La, but after we had both showered in our flip-flops) [View Full Entry]

---

---