In the 10 days that we have been driving around Iceland in the rain, we have felt like the L'il Abner comic strip character with the perpetual dark cloud over his head. That dark cloud disappeared on July 8, and we saw the sun. We had sun for about a 24-hour period (with clouds) so that is probably it for July--that one day of totally dry, sunny weather. And, for this spectacular weather event, we also happened to be in the warmest spot (15C or 59F) in Iceland. Our drive was through the East Fjords and down to the southeastern portion of Iceland. The scenery was spectacular.
That night we stayed in the village of Höfn in the southeastern part of Iceland. In Icelandic, Höfn means harbor. The wind was quiet and their harbor was beautiful. From our room on the other side of the hotel, we could even see Vatnajökull glacier.
The next morning we woke to sun, but our itinerary led us south and into the clouds. The ancient basalt lava flows are covered over with a beautiful, spongy moss called wooly fringe moss in which small wildflowers grow. When it is raining, it turns almost fluorescent green.
At the Jökulsárlón lagoon and the mouth of Vatnajökull glacier, there were clouds, but no wind or rain.
Once the icebergs calve from the glacier, they float the short distance to the Atlantic Ocean. The grassland surrounding the lagoon is populated by some very aggressive Arctic Terns. They took a disliking to Dan
As we left the lagoon, rain returned, and because we stayed so long at the lagoon, it was also getting late--not dark--just late in the day and we had a lot of kilometers to cover before we arrived at our next lodging in Hveragerði.
Along the way we stopped at Fjaðrárglúfur a 100m-deep gorge formed during the Ice Age two million years ago. The scenery was other worldly, and the walk along the gorge, even in the rain, was spectacular.
The day before the sun came out, we took a drive to Borgarfjörður Eystri, the northernmost fjord on the East Fjords mountain range. On the way we passed "stunning" scenery that sadly we could not see because the drive was into the heavy clouds. Sometimes, it was even hard to see the road over the mountain pass, but at the end of the road and past the village of Bakkagerði we saw puffins. At the harbor, there are about 10-15,000 mating pairs of puffins. Puffins burrow into dirt side of the hill for their nests.
On the other side of the rock, fulmars nest in the rocky niches.
On the way back to our hotel in Egilsstaðir (July 7), through the clouds we could just barely see some of the surrounding mountains beyond Lake Lögurinn. To see mountains at all was a good omen for the next day.
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