Thursday, September 5, 2024

Sep 5 – Glaciers and Icebergs

Today was a day that I had really hoped for sun and we woke up to cloud and rain. Then miraculously when I really wanted it, the sun and bright blue sky broke out.

As I said yesterday the “campground” at Vestrahorn was just their parking lot and it was full.

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Our path today.

Sep 5

Even though the weather was terrible in the morning we drove out a long dirt road to try and hike to the Flaajokull Glacier.

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When we got near the parking area the weather was still bad and you could barely see anything .

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So we turned around and headed back to the Ring Road.

When we got there the weather was great.

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And the glaciers started appearing on the horizon.

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Our destination was the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon and Diamond Beach.

We parked at the beach and checked it out first. The outflow from the lagoon to the ocean had a bunch of small icebergs in it.

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Some of the smaller icy bits wash up on the beach. The ice is mostly crystal clear giving the beach its name.

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The wind was once again vicious today. It was very tiring just trying to stand up, let alone walk against it. On the beach it blew the sand so hard that it really stung any exposed skin. We tried to stay on the windward shore.

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A photosphere.

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We then went under the highway bridge to the lagoon.

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A photosphere.

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A photosphere.

So many shaped to stare at.

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Going back to the van we noticed that the bergs in the outflow had melted a lot.

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Back on the highway the horizon was again filled with glaciers poking out from the central ice sheet that covers most of this part of Iceland.

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The photosphere.

Our next stop was the short walk from the parking lot to the smaller lagoon of the Fjallsokull  glacier.

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We just sat on the shore and stared for a long time.

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The photosphere.

Pictures just don’t do these places any justice. They compress things so much that these massive sights loose their majesty.

We moved on to our campsite near the Skaftell Glacier.

We have seen the bus hotels in other places in our travels but not here yet.

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They have seating on the front of the top and bottom layers, sleeping quarters on the back of the top layer and a kitchen at the back of the bottom layer. Avery interesting way to travel. I was surprised that he fit in the campground.

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