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Published: June 14th 2017
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Our final full day in Iceland. Wow, what an action packed week. With darkness never coming, there are no visual cues or time pressure to get activities done before dark. We have missed dinner at the local restaurant or shown up right before closing every night we've been here. Today was no exception. Didn't even check into our hotel til midnight. Yep, we're those people...
After a late breakfast we headed back towards Reykjavik wth a few stops in mind. There is an old WW2 bomber that crashed on the southern beach just west of Vik. It was a long cold walk to get there, but it was an interesting thing to see. As the pictures show, much of the plane was still intact. Unfortunately, it hasn't escaped dumb ass tourists and graffiti idiots as well as it fought off weather and time. I don't know much of the back story but I do intend to look it up.
Just west of here is the mighty Skógafoss. We have seen many awesome waterfalls this week. These are the kind of waterfalls you may only see a few times in a lifetime. To have them all packed together is pretty
spectacular. The all feed off the melting glaciers in the highlands and cascade off dramatic cliffs and bluffs carved by glaciers, eroded by water and wind and/or formed by volcanic eruptions. Indeed most of these waterfalls are in the region that was evacuated in 2010 when a major volcanoe closed off airline travel to and from Europe for weeks. One of the locals pointed out that the evening fog was actually volcanic ash that gets kicked up during storms from this eruption. Anyway, Skógafoss was nothing short of spectacular.
By this point, we have definitely hit our 10,000 steps and then some, but we weren't done hiking yet. 45 minutes east of Reykjavik is an area called Steam Valley. It's not hard to know when you're in the vicinity as you begin to notice geothermal plumes of water all over the hillside like little smoldering fires. A short diversion off route 1 takes you to a well know area where people hike an hour or so to the true Steam Valley. Ginger and Geneva agree that this was their favorite part of the trip. In Iceland, a natural hot spring is not good enough. Here we found a natural
hot spring river! We walked through mist from boiling water pits so thick you couldn't see the person in front of you. Beyond the hot water areas with 100 degrees Celsius warning signs (hot enough to burn your fresh), the river itself had an area perfect for bathing. We had fun with the kids building dams like beavers to make larger pools of hot water for us to sit in. We spent several hours at this place that was meant to be a short stop.
We ended the day in Reykjavik. We rolled into town around 10 pm tired and hungry. We spent an hour looking for an open restaurant and finally settled into garden burgers, fries and beer. On our way to the hotel, we saw an Icelandic summer sunset and sunrise (which are actually the same thing). A solid finish. Tomorrow, we have the morning in Reykjavik before flying out to Dublin. Thanks for a terrific week Iceland! ??
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