Got up early and decided to walk to the airport, taking a stroll through some neighborhoods of Reykjavik I hadn’t seen before. Flight was less than an hour long, so the puddle jumper dropped down in Egilsstaðir around 11:30, on the other side of the island.  My orange Kia Sportage was ready to go, and I was on my way.

First stop was into the town of Egilsstaðir to go grocery shopping for the essentials, and then the driving began.

This is what a lot of the land looks like. I think it’s called Hverfjall or something.  Or maybe that’s specifically the crater.  I don’t know.  It’s a lot of rocks and mountains and lava things.

Through this area are the Krafla Lava Fields, which are just fields of rocks that used to be lava. Would be fun to wander through, but slowing down a little while I drove sufficed given the weather.

Then there is the Namafjll area.  It has a lot of hot things in it, like these Mud Pots.

It also has Hverarondor Hverir.  Fancy name, but it’s just this whistling hot bit of rocks that smells a lot like sulfur. I did put my hands in the steam and warmed them up. There are a bunch of litle ones like this in the area.

They made a geothermal power plant and have this lake, lake Viti, out near it. Pictures here don’t really do it justice, as it was an interesting green color, and was once again steaming.

Take another moment to ooh and aah and appreciate the fact that I walked a mile in freezing cold rain without gloves or waterproof clothing to look at this.  The lava rocks around it were cool too. I should have taken a picture of those.

Next is the Dettifoss waterfall.  It’s described as the most powerful waterfall in Europe. Maybe they should have it negotiate with Putin.

Then you can walk back upstream a bit to find another waterfall.  This is as I’m walking upstream, which is just a nice crevice of water in general.

This is Selfoss Waterfall. The big one, not the tons of tiny ones. Seems nice, wish I could have gotten closer.

After these, I decided to take the Sportage through the back roads of the National Forest.  That’s why I got it, right?  It was a slow drive through rough roads, but the scenery was lovely and I got to sit in the heated car for a while.  I even got to drive through a construction zone like some guy on a truck commercial.

Once though the park, the main roads took me up around the Northern coastline of Iceland.  Here’s a pulloff with a couple pictures.

Then finally to hostel Arbot, which is a small hostel on a farm in the middle of nowhere.  But it’s quite nice – the kind of place that makes me think running a sheep farm in the middle of nowhere wouldn’t be so bad.

I got two parking tickets in Akureyri in the matter of a couple hours, which is a pretty good accomplishment in itself. Stupid Icelandic parking system.

The rest of Tuesday night consisted of wandering around Akureyri a bit, followed by trivia night in the hostel bar/cafe. A bunch of English people living in German sat with me and they had too many people, so one of them and I joined two Icelandic guys next to us for a team. That turned out to be a winning combination, as there were a few Icelandic questions that they nailed, then the rest was a solid team effort.  We won a free round of beers and some weird Icelandic shot.