Some roadside rest stops have picnic tables. This one had crosses depicting all those who have died on a particularly bad stretch of highway over some volcanic hills northeast of Reykjavik. It is an effort by private citizens to get their government to upgrade the road and save lives.

The real problem is that even with round-the-clock plowing, ice, gale-force winds, and too many hours of pure darkness make driving an iffy proposition.

The celestial light show of the north depends upon solar activity and the weather. The sun did its best, but the weather was not as cooperative. Marcia booked a “super Jeep.” Each of these 4-wheel-drive vehicles has 40-inch tires, carries about ten people, and has a ground clearance of about 18 inches. They can go where no no Gray Line buses can follow.

So, the deal is find the North Star, and drop down about twice the width of the palm of your hand. Assuming there are no clouds, and a wave of solar winds has hit the atmosphere, you might see a green curtain of light stretching in an east-to-west direction. Now, the human eye is sensitive, but a digital camera is even more so. What looked a like a faint green smear to the naked eye, glowed neon green in a 6-second exposure. Not to get too philosophical, but what is reality, what your eye sees, or what your camera records?

Our first observation was the best (say, a three out of 10) as cloud cover and gale-force winds blowing snow pretty much dimmed or obscured our subsequent viewing. Still, 4-wheeling our way through unplowed service roads on a volcanic mountain spewing sulfurous steam, while racing to outrun the cloud cover, was exciting.  And even a minor sighting of the northern lights for those of us who have never seen them bordered on awesome.

Note on the photo: shot at ISO 1600 at 6 seconds, so there is a lot of grainy noise that needs Photoshopping out. The orange band is the lights of Reykjavik, which even at a distance outshine the aurora.  For scale, the green band covered the distance across the sky of a yardstick held at arm’s length, with a thickness of the height of a 1-liter bottle of Coke held also held at arm’s length.

Though it has its attractions, and the people are friendly, I am not sure that Iceland really qualifies as a country. In a sense, it seems more like a marketer’s concept of “what can we do with this place?” The Vikings needed a rest stop between the Old World and the New. Reykjavik fit the bill and was colonized. 1500 years later, the 300,000 inhabitants were wondering where the Vikings went. So, they looked around to see what they could do with what they had: a tectonic mid-Atlantic ridge, clean water, some sheep, and the northern lights.

OK, Disneyland it ain’t, but it certainly beats out Greenland. First, the water. It really is the best we’ve ever had. And the mayor of London is on the verge of buying Icelandic water by the tankerful to pump into the reservoirs of London. Since the oil disasters in the Gulf of Mexico and the Exxon Valdez, single-hulled tankers are no longer used to transport crude. If you want an old tanker, they are cheap. Cheap enough, that filling them with virtually free and plentiful Icelandic water, and selling the load to the Brits only costs about $2 more per ton than trying to unpollute Thames water to drink.

Now as to the rest. I’ll cover the northern lights in another post, and the sheep go for wool products and the famous and tasty Icelandic lamb–enough said.

Being situated on the mid-Atlantic ridge has it virtues. For one thing, upwelling basalt means that Iceland is growing by the length of a human fingernail every year. In about 62,000 years, the place will have grown a mile. So, in only about  156 million years, it will be as wide as the USA. The future is bright for Iceland. Right now, it’s the size of Kentucky.

Within frozen-spitting distance of Reykjavik are the geothermal features and one waterfall. You just can’t charge people $80 a person to see hot and cold bubbles. But, call the three features “The Golden Circle Tour” and you are, well, golden.

And so we sat crammed into a Greyline bus for six hours traveling around the countryside to see three potentially fascinating sights in poor proximity to one another. No kidding, total time out of the bus viewing the sights: 20 minutes each. And, we arrived at one site, “Geysir” (the place that gave it’s name to geysers), so late it was too dark to see anything. How much brain does it take to figure that you can’t take a 6-hour tour when there are only four hours of daylight?

In any event, here are a description and a couple of shots from the tour:

Pingveller National Park

We are astride the mid-Atlantic ridge. Photo left is the American tectonic plate where almost  all Americans but us western Californians, and Washintonian-islanders live. Photo right, is the European plate. The Rift Valley in between is gradually widening as the ridge does its thing.

Gullfoss Waterfall

As far as I can determine, this waterfall is known for its accessibility though its name means “golden.” It is pretty enough in the snow, but the frozen trees nearby were more interesting.

Geysir
There is only one active geyser, and it isn’t Geysir.  Geysir has been extinct for years. The current geyser erupts every 15 minutes or so and is about 10 feet high. We heard it, but since there were no lights and it was pitch black, we never saw it.