Month: June 2024

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Iceland: the land of trolls, lava, moss, and Yoda

What, first it was hobbits, and now it’s Yoda? Okay, I’m gonna offer up a sneak preview just to show why that headline makes sense. This photo is taken from the inside of a cave, known as –and I know you’ll never guess this– the Yoda Cave. I don’t know how they came up with that. Actually, rumor has it that George Lucas spent a fortnight in the cave doing psychedelics sometime in the early ’70s.

In fact, if you look carefully, to the left you can see the outline of Princess Leia’s chin, lips, and nose. Additionally, the outline of Luke Skywalker’s buttocks is easily seen on the right, and Hans Solo’s cleft chin is obviously part of the rock formations on the far left. So I guess we can thank Icelandic caves and LSD for Star Wars!

Kirkjubæjarklaustur

Maybe I should’ve used a Star Trek metaphor, given that Captain James T. Kirk’s actual name was James T. Kirkjubæjarklaustur, only shortened because so many aliens couldn’t pronounce it. A lot of people have no idea that Captain Kirk was Icelandic.

Anyway, Kirkjubæjarklaustur was a verdant source of all sorts of things to see and do, including talking with Yoda and playing with actual lava. Off we go to where no man has gone before!

First we had to get our motor runnin’, then head on down the highway, lookin’ for adventure, and whatever comes our way… Born to be Wild, Born to be Wi-i-i-i-ild!

I might add the following verse just for us:

Driving a dumb Ford Puma

Swerving to our doom-ah!

With the conTrolls fighting us at every turn

The Ford engineers must burn!

Born to hate the stupid Ford Puma, born to hate the stupid Ford Puma!

Okay, I’m sticking to my day job, don’t worry. Oh wait, I don’t have a job.

And yes they do take their troll-lore seriously here. And no, these aren’t trolleys. And yes, I often answer unasked questions out loud. It’s called “quirky,” not “mentally challenged” like they said at the ward.

Kirkjubæjarklaustur also hosts the charming little town of Vik with its 300 or so inhabitants, which itself hosts the lava show, which you’ll see in just a bit (or sooner if you cheat and scroll down). While the two of us are pretty tired of looking at grandiose cathedrals, in Iceland there were quite a few of these quaint little churches in most towns, generally with the same charming design. As an American who is currently observing religious thought steadily insinuating itself into American politics, seeing these little churches makes me wax philosophical about the good ol’ days, when churches were mostly just a social gathering place as well as a place of acceptance, caring, generosity, and the occasional apple pie. It’d be a lot better to have a bunch of apolitical small churches like that than a politically involved national mega-religion trying to tell everyone how to behave through the government. And if you only disagree with that because your religion is the one behind all of it, then you just proved my point.

With today’s highly charged political climate in the US, a house like this might be lookin’ mighty appealing to a lot of Americans right about now.

So here’s the outside of the Yoda Cave. The cave is part of a promontory called Hjörleifshöfði, which literally means the residence of Hjörleifur, plus a lot of dots. Poor Hjörleifur was the 8th dwarf in Snow White, so he didn’t make the cut, and then he tried out for The Hobbit, and made it all the way to the 14th dwarf, but they only needed 13, so he made a costume that looked like his door entrance and tried out for Star Wars and landed the part. The rest is history, at least BaldSasquatch history, especially if you don’t worry about the impossibility of the timeline I just laid out, unless you believe, as I do, that Hjörleifur was a time traveler.

The area is a very short drive from the highway over a dirt road, and surprisingly it’s apparently privately owned as the request for parking fees (done online all over Iceland) were for a private individual, not the government. Pretty low overhead income stream I’d say.

Now I’d like to introduce you to Moss Heath, who will be our tour guide through all things moss in Iceland. Moss Heath is probably a lumbersexual. Did you know there was such a thing? A lumbersexual is a burly breed of man that looks more like a rugged outdoorsman than a model. I stumbled across that while looking up different ways to say rugged beauty of Iceland. I was relieved that it had nothing to do with being kinky with planks of wood.

Moss, moss, moss everywhere. In your soup, and in your hair. You can’t stop moss, you can’t use floss, and you can’t toss moss sauce for a loss. Cuz moss is da boss, even if you cry, “No mas! No mas!”

Compare these two pictures above to the two pictures above them. Notice the difference in color? We visited in May, which is apparently right about the time the moss starts changing color to green. We would’ve loved to have seen the fields in their full verdant splendor, but it was also fascinating to nearly be able to see the color change right before our very eyes.

They have so much moss they store it on top of their houses for later use in making moss soup, a common staple of Iceland, at least until Bosch came in and took over Iceland’s staple industry.

Our hotel (Hotel Laki) was in the Kirkjubæjarklaustur district as well. The location was a great jumping-off point for exploring further away from Reykjavík than I think many tourists go, unless they’re driving the entire Ring Road around the island. The two pictures on the right were taken from our room; you can rent a regular hotel room or little separated cottages at Hotel Laki. I guess those would be good housing for a honeymoon, depending on the decibel level of your moaning and screaming.

We also got to see the results of a nuclear test. Just kiddin’. As good as humans are at destroying things, they got nothing on Mother Nature, who can simply belch and lay thousands of acres to waste.

Not far from the hotel are the majestic views of Fjadrargljufur Canyon. Getting to that view entails an uphill hike, but we managed it just fine and it was worth every step. It was also fun chatting with a German couple we met up there who kindly took our picture (duh- that’s obviously a German-taken photo). We’ve had some nice conversations with fellow travelers over the years; a lot of them Germans. They either like traveling more than most or are more prone to chatting with Americans.

Vik is the home of a clever little business called The Lava Show. It’s held in a relatively small, nondescript room, but who cares, the star of the show is a very hot Miss Lava. After a film and a talk by an engaging host, the lava began rippling its way into our laps.

As it oozed on down the channel, the presenter picked up a metal stick and began playing with the lava, telling us all about the many properties of the material. As soon as the lava entered the room, the temperature began to climb steadily upward, until it became like a sauna, resulting in a flurry of coats being removed. Since we were in a Scandinavian-esque country, I halfway expected everyone to keep going and sit naked as if in a sauna, but I think most of the guests were tourists from outside the country, so I only saw a glimpse of a bra strap. Miss Lava remained completely unclothed, however.

We learned that when volcanoes erupt, particularly the one near Vik, the lava isn’t their biggest worry. It’s the tons of water that gets released from the glaciers above the eruption, resulting in a flow of water greater than the four largest rivers in the world, combined. You get trivia points if you can name the four largest rivers in the world. Answer at the end of this post.*

We also learned that Iceland protects its citizens in case of destruction by eruptions, floods, or troll attacks. They are automatically covered and will have their domiciles and belongings replaced in case of such a disaster. It’s nice to have a government that actually looks out for its people, especially the ones who suffer from some bad luck. Although I don’t know if you can call it bad luck when you pretty much live right on top of a volcano.

Afterwards the lava cools down fairly quickly. It’s eventually recycled for future shows and is heated up inside a specially made oven they got from Lava Ovens R Us, just outside Reykjavik. To set this business up, they also had to deal with municipal officials who initially responded to their request of bringing flowing hot lava and tourists together indoors with, “You want to do what?“

Here are some of the scenes showing lava flows; the one on the right was from a news report on a volcano that erupted just a couple of days after we left. “The Andersons? Yeah, they just left.” “Okay, we can erupt now.” Swine lava.

Rangárþing

This is the only photo we took in Rangárþing, so apparently there’s nothing else interesting in that district. Just for kicks, I looked it up in Wikipedia: Rangárþing eystra (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈrauŋkˌaurˌθiŋk ˌeistra]) is a municipality located in southern Iceland in the Southern Region, between Eystri Rangá in the west and Jökulsá á Sólheimasandi in the east. The largest settlements are Skógar and Hvolsvöllur.

That’s it. That’s all there is to read. So now you’re an expert on Rangárþing.

Also note that Skógar has about 20 residents and was still worthy of making the list. So, yeah.

Reykjavik

Before visiting Iceland I was a bit curious about Reykjavik, because there really didn’t seem to be a lot of landmarks or interesting things to see published about the city. In fact, on most top ten things to-do lists the only activities or sights within Reykjavik are food tours and the Lava Show (they opened one up in Reykjavik too), the rest are tours outside the city. Reykjavik is the capital and Iceland’s largest city, but it also only has about 140,000 residents. By comparison, if you’re an Oregonian you’ll probably know of Gresham, Oregon, which has about 110,000 residents, so just a bit smaller, and not exactly a place that screams tourist sites. Salem and Eugene in Oregon are both larger than Reykjavik and really not exciting in the least. Kent, Washington is about the same size as Reykjavik, and is just as boring (just like Boring, Oregon). And in Portugal, Reykjavik would be its 6th largest city, right after Braga. Having been to Gresham, Salem, Eugene, Kent, and Braga (which most Americans probably never heard of, but is in fact a lovely little city), I guess it makes sense that there’s not a whole lot of reason to expect anything glamorous out of Reykjavik.

Our first stop was to catch a ride over Iceland in a simulated flyover adventure that makes you feel as if you’re actually flying over the landscape. I rode something very similar called Soarin’ Around the World at Disney’s Epcot Center years ago. Perhaps one of the best testimonials as to the beauty of Iceland was Carolyn being brought to tears simply due to the beauty of what she was seeing. Since I’m a man and am under strict parental orders to never cry, I of course didn’t, but I could tell that I would’ve had I been more of a girly man. I did make sure to grab my crotch, spit on the sidewalk, and loudly proclaim my desire for a beer when we left the place just to make sure everyone understood all my manliness.

(Okay, I actually choked up a little too, but don’t tell anyone. It really was that breathtaking.)

One of the iconic structures in Reykjavik is Hallgrímskirkja, which is a Lutheran church and the second tallest building in Iceland, after Smáratorg Tower, which is an office and retail building that also served as Smaug’s lair for a time. Also, Hallgrímskirkja looks like something Saruman might’ve lived in.

The architecture in Reykjavik is classified as “normal,” by the Architectural Rating System Syndicate and Enterprise Strategies (ARSSES), based in Helsinki, Finland.

One of the top tourist sites of Reykjavik is Rainbow Road. I couldn’t read the Icelandic signs, but best I could decipher was that you have to be gay to walk on it. We snuck Carolyn on for a quick shot and got her off there before any hoards of lesbians could descend upon her. I wanted to walk on the colors too, so I approached a group of men who were obviously there as gay stand-ins, and grabbed one of their hands and sashayed over to the rainbow, dragging him behind me. Unfortunately I must not be a very attractive gay man because the guy yanked his hand away and slapped me in the face. Or maybe he was just a damn homophobe.

Just another couple of random photos trying to salvage some sort of picturesque beauty out of a utilitarian town.

One of the interesting landmarks in Reykjavik is the Perlan museum. And by “interesting landmark” we mean “the best of what little there is to actually see.” I mean, it’s a fine little city, don’t get me wrong. It’s just not touristy-picturesque. Besides, the wonder and beauty of Iceland is in nature, so I think Iceland is smart not to try and gussy up Reykjavik just for tourists. On top of all that, Iceland is currently ranked as the third happiest country in the world, right after Finland and Denmark, so whatever they’re doing is working.

We did learn about what troll women looked like, plus they had this statue of an even bigger one. Doh! You know I kid, Wifey. To me you’re absolutely the most beautiful trolless in the world. The pointy-eared TILF there doesn’t even come close, although you have to admit, she’s pretty hot for a troll.

One of the featured exhibits was an ice cave, made entirely out of –you’ll never guess– frozen water. That’s right. They even carved out an ice throne designed to give those with hemorrhoids some relief. To thank them when I left the cave I gave them a typical Icelandic icy stare, which is always appreciated.

By the way, it was really cold in there, so Carolyn ran pell mell to the exit as soon as she could. I stayed so I could experience what it felt like to be a freshly caught trout thrown into the freezer. I only left after I’d had it up to my gills.

One of the features of Perlan is a slowly rotating top featuring a very nice restaurant. When we travel, we eat a lot via grocery store, but we wanted to experience at least one good Icelandic restaurant dish. It turns out that restaurant is actually quite a nice one, with a focus on Icelandic culinary traditions. The sheep eyes were a little gooey, but everything else was great! After lunch, I walked around the outside snapping a bunch of shots in order to make what amounted to a 360 degree view of Reykjavik. Instead, I selected these four shots because there’s just not enough to see to make all that work worthwhile.

⁨Thingvellir National Park

Believe it or not, we’ve come to the last leg of our Icelandic experience, albeit with a stop where we all get to see the edge of the world, more or less literally. Iceland sits right on top of where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates sit across from each other in a rift valley, usually exchange pleasantries. Sometimes, however, they get into shouting matches, which is why there are about 130 volcanoes in Iceland, 32 of which are active.

Near the rift valley is the Oxararfoss waterfall, best known for its water cascading over rock.

Walking away from the waterfall and toward the rift offers up this view. That’s North America on the left and Europe on the right. You can tell because the cliff on the right is much more liberal.

We didn’t see much snow other than the glaciers while in Iceland, so this little spot of white hunkiness got us all twitterpated and we took 14 photos of it. But I’m only showing you the best one.

I’m gonna have to trot out some more Lord of the Rings references because this looks exactly like the trail Sam, Frodo, and Gollum took as they entered Mordor. Except I think that one rock on the right used to be on the other side. Pphht. Movies are so fake.

Actually, that photo would make for a pretty interesting and challenging jigsaw puzzle, wouldn’t it?

Standing in the middle of that means you could get squished like a bug if the continental plates decided to quit shovin’ and began reaching out to each other for a hug.

This is what babies see when they look out of their baby carriage.

And this is what Sam and Frodo saw after they crossed the border into Mordor.

Mount Doom.

Whenever we’re traveling I like to snap photos of signs that are made funny because of language differences, or just because I figured out some way to make fun of them. Here is my collection from Iceland, starting with an inn that thinks it’s a bank… or the other way around. I had absolutely no idea which one it was, so I looked it up. It is a hotel. But apparently with ATM themes throughout.

When your bratty kid snores too loud, he’s called a snorrabraut.

I made sure I didn’t bring any broken flowers on any of our hikes, because apparently they’re not allowed. I also wore sneakers since boots obviously aren’t allowed either. It was sure fun walking on that grass once I had the right equipment!

I tried saying a bunch of complimentary things to the cliff edge, but it remained steadfast in its insecurity. Or unsecurity, which is how Icelandianisticish people say it.

Apparently Kaffi’s vagina was impressive enough to get a whole building named after it.

I guess you say, “I have to go snyrting” when you have to use the loo. They are pretty polite in Iceland, always minding their snyrts and q’s.

Based on the color alone, I think we all know what this is. I’ll only add that there’s a limit to the kinds of exotic foods I’ll try, and I do draw the line at frozen poop.

This isn’t a sign, unless it’s a sign of impending electrocution. It’s actually a picture from our hotel room that conveys a couple of points. First is I think it’s a great idea to hardwire a hair dryer into the wall; that’s a pretty effective theft deterrent. But it’s also a little unsettling to have an electrical cord dangling into the sink. Of course, most of us almost always use a hair dryer over a sink (although my hair drying days were long gone a couple of decades ago), but still, this doesn’t feel very safe. We somehow survived, however.

I’m gonna close this Icelandic Trilogy with a bunch of pictures of Northern Lights, taken from inside the Perlan museum. Unfortunately, we weren’t there at a good time for actual Northern Lights, although we were treated to same during our cruise in Norway. However, those were a little bit blah, especially with the naked eye. I don’t know if we’ll ever get a chance to see the real spectacular versions, but hey, that’s why photography was invented! I was gonna pretend that we saw these ourselves, but then I realized it would violate the BaldSasquatch code of only printing the 100% truth. About everything. All the time.

Um, what’s wrong with my nose?

Fare thee well Iceland, we’re glad to have known ye!

* The largest rivers of the world, in order: Nile, Amazon, Yangtze, Mississippi.

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Iceland: the land of fire and ice and hobbits

We spent about a week in Iceland, which felt like just the proper amount of time. We saw all the major attractions we wanted to see without it feeling like a trek to Mount Doom, and were otherwise enveloped by nature’s beauty everywhere we went. As I mentioned in my last entry, I’m posting the photos in alphabetical order by location partly to highlight the interesting place names. So now we’re to the “f’s,” with Flúðir⁩ leading the way.

⁨Flúðir⁩

If ⁨Flúðir⁩ doesn’t sound like a place from the Lord of the Rings, I don’t know what does. Tolkien certainly could have used it, because this is the only photo we took in ⁨Flúðir⁩, so I think only a couple of arctic foxes would’ve noticed. In any case, the photo is a good representation of our drive: long straightaways with vast plains and rarely a mountain or four not in sight. Except we never found Mount Doom. But some of those lava fields sure look similar to what Frodo and Sam had to navigate as they approached Mordor’s volcano.

On the last day we also honored Gandalf’s admonition to “fly you fools!”

⁨Grímsnes-og Grafningshreppur⁩

⁨Grímsnes-og Grafningshreppur⁩ sure sounds like a place the orcs must’ve lived, eh? The main settlement in the area is Sólheimar, which has a whopping 80 human inhabitants and I don’t think there are any orcs or goblins left. The main attraction of this region is the Kerið Volcanic Crater. I looked up how to pronounce the “ð” in Icelandic, and got this: Place the tip of your tongue between your upper and lower teeth. Push air out of your mouth between your tongue and your teeth. You should feel some friction.

Screw that, that’s way too much work. I’m just gonna call it Cheerio.

Kerið (aka Cheerio) is thought to be a cone volcano which erupted, emptying its magma reserve. Once the magma was depleted, the weight of the cone collapsed into the empty magma chamber. The current pool of water at the bottom of the crater is at the same level as the water table and is not caused by rainfall. However, it does look like a cereal bowl for a giant capable of holding an enormous helping of Cheerios.

Kerið’s caldera is estimated to have formed approximately 6,500 years ago. Just to give you an idea as to how long ago that was, the world’s first cities appeared in southern Mesopotamia around that time (or if you’re a Bible literalist, about the time Eve was showing off her pet snake to Adam). I think it’s safe to say there was no photography of the explosion, especially since the Mesopotamians hadn’t invented camera film yet.

You may be asking yourself, what in Sam Hill is Carolyn really doing? She was actually fighting the wind (nature’s kind, not the, uh, other one) because it was windy as hell up there. With her arms extended, she looks like she was about ready to take off like the Flying Nun. Although if she’d have been blown off the cliff she would’ve been the Falling None.

⁨Haukadalur Geothermal Field⁩

One item on our bucket list was to see a geyser. We didn’t know it was on our bucket list until we were looking at sights to see in Iceland and found them there. Our bucket list tends to grow when we’re traveling, but it mostly ends up filled with things crossed off. We’re gonna need a bigger bucket.

They have a nice operation nearby with an upscale restaurant and a large gift shop/cafe within a few hundred meters of the field of rising steam and boiling water. At first we thought we had it made by finding a place with guaranteed restrooms because the entire building looked like it was for old geezers. We just thought “Geysir” was how they spelled geezer. But, despite the hordes of people younger than us there, there were plenty of restrooms available, and they honored the geezer name by featuring a robust selection of Preparation H and black socks.

By the way, here is a little trivia to lend credence to our geezer confusion. In British English, geyser has two meanings: a “geyser” can be either a hot spring or a water heater. And for both meanings of the word, most British speakers rhyme it with “geezer.” So there. Tally ho!

The area looked like the fallout from a nuclear bomb, except without all the dead people and stuff.

Just in case you’re not familiar with celsius, 100 degrees is when water starts to boil. I decided not to challenge any signs and test any temperatures, because I like my fingers rare.

They have a cute “litli geysir” before you get to the main event, presumably for the kids to play in.

The word “geyser” actually came from the Icelandic geyser known as Geysir, but ol’ Geysir stopped spouting, so another one called Strokkur has become the main event. Strokkur” translates to “churn;” so get your mind out of the gutter. With all that said, here below was what you’ve all been waiting for all along! (No, not the end of the blog, the geyser eruption!)

We actually captured the whole eruption on video, but the budget for BaldSasquatch –despite the non-existent advertising bucks the site will never generate– doesn’t allow for videos. So go see your own damn geyser if we’re not enough for you, ha ha! Anyway, the geyser erupts every 4-10 minutes (it ain’t Old Faithful), so we watched a couple of eruptions. Our video had one that went a bit higher, so apparently they can vary in intensity.

Of course we always have to root through the souvenirs and chachkies but we rarely buy anything except funny hats. And by “buy” we mean try them on to try to catch some local fleas and then put them back on the rack to share some of our own Portuguese fleas.

⁨Hvolsvöllur⁩a

Hvolsvöllur⁩a features waterfalls, incredible vistas, glaciers, strange rock formations, a Piggly Wiggly, and a restaurant with a choir. There’s lots to see here, so strap in!

First we have to show our favorite grocery store in Iceland, which I nicknamed Piggly Wiggly. You might think the name of the place is 10-20, but those are in fact its operating hours (20 is 10:00 PM for you American luddites). The name of the store is actually “Bónus,” and they have 31 stores in the country. I gotta say it’s nice not to have to jump out of the car and search for a little sticker on the door with the operating hours on it during, let’s say, a thunderstorm while surrounded by muggers, a rabid poodle and a very angry duck. Accordingly I think every business should display their hours like Bónus. If Carolyn and I ever set up a store in our retirement, we’d probably paint a big 16-16:20 on it.

After stocking up on junk food (we couldn’t find any appropriate foods earmarked for cooking in a geyser, surprisingly), we set out on the road, snapping photos of the sweeping vistas from our stupid Ford Puma. Seriously, that car almost killed us. As just one example, the cruise control was so poorly designed that if you wanted to slow down a bit by pressing the button, and held it down for longer than maybe half a second, the requested speed would suddenly drop in 10 km increments, meaning that within seconds you could go from 70 to 30 (and I guess zero, but I never tested that), but at a reduction in speed so abrupt that it felt like the brakes were being stomped on. Since they weren’t, meaning the brake lights didn’t signal anything, if anyone would’ve been behind us during any of the first thirty times I wrestled with that shitshow, they surely would’ve plowed right through the Puma’s butt cheeks and wrecked ‘um.

Skógafoss is one of the biggest waterfalls in Iceland, with a drop of about 60 meters (131.234 cubits) and a width of 25 meters (54.6807 cubits). With the right conditions, you can see a rainbow. That’s just a word of warning for any American conservatives who think the falls might support gay rights and so would prefer to avoid them.

When I first looked at this photo, I thought Carolyn might secretly be a leprechaun, what with a rainbow shooting out of her ear and all. But in actuality, she’s the pot ‘o gold at the end of my rainbow!

You can walk up 527 steps in order to see the top of the waterfall. But it seemed to me that the bottom is where all the action is, and I’m pretty sure our knees only had about 100 stairs in them. Besides, while I’ve seen the top of plenty of water, I was more anxious to see the backside of water simply because of the marketing campaign offered up by the following waterfall:

Seljalandsfoss is one of Iceland’s most famous waterfalls, best known for the ability to walk behind it (and get soaked in the process). For the life of me, I can’t understand why that’s such a big deal. Just to make sure, before we went there I craned my neck into a sink while running water from the faucet, but the water looked exactly the same as the front.

We were excited to get up close and personal with a glacier, but apparently a glacier’s icy stare is enough to melt the adventure right out of aging tourists, as well as screw with the spelling of “recommend.”

So we stayed a respectful distance away despite how appealing that glacier water must have tasted, especially with all the chocolate bits.

As you can see by the picture on the left, a huge walrus had camped out in the lake in front of the glacier. No, no, the picture on the left, not me on the right!

Next up is Reynisfjara Beach, made famous for its black sand as well as basalt columns. The columns were formed after lava erupted from a volcano and then flowed onto the beach during high tide, and the sea rapidly cooled them. Some say the formations look like a pipe organ.

Although it looks like a giant pipe organ, as hard as I might I couldn’t create any sound by blowing on the rocks. Even worse, I couldn’t find the keyboard, so we had to make due with overhearing about six different languages speculating as to why some nut was kissing the rocks while I wiped the sand off my lips.

“Black sand beach” sounds rather exotic until you look at it and realize it’s just sand that’s a little darker than most. Although the naturally occuring footprint-looking indentations are a sight to behold.

Those rocks formed the basis of a legend concerning two trolls who attempted to drag a ship to shore. Unfortunately for the trolls, even though they were disguised as humans, they were caught by the sun’s rays and turned to stone, becoming the sea stacks known as the Reynisdrangar. Personally, I would’ve named them Laurel and Hardy.

Or maybe it should be the Three Stooges.

I’m sure the rock formations in the background are called something but I couldn’t read the sign from that distance. I’d also bet there’s some trollish legend attached to them, but pretty much all I can see here is my beautiful wife, who is clearly no troll. I’m a lucky man!

Otherwise, here are a series of pictures of the surrounding area. Again, photos don’t do it justice, but suffice to say if you look under “rugged beauty” in the dictionary, there is just one word: Iceland.

And then if you look up “Iceland,” this is all they show.

We had lunch in the quaint little town of Vik (pronounced “Veek;” also, “Vik” means bay, and “Reykur” means smoky, so Reykjavík –pronounced “Raykaveek”– means smokey bay, probably on account of all the indigenous hippies smoking lava bongs) and found ourselves surrounded by this church choir belting out their version of Hells Bells by AC/DC. Do you see that table just in front of the woman in yellow? Yeah, that’s where we were sitting when they started assembling. After one of them balanced their music sheet on my head, we realized we might be in the way and so wolfed down the rest of our lunch and stepped away to avoid eardrum damage. It was actually kind of sweet, unless you wanted to eat lunch without a choir three inches from your ear. But hey, Vik only has a little over 300 residents, so I’m sure they take whatever entertainment they can get, other than when they’re not dodging lava flows and the huge floods the eruptions often cause.

One thing I noticed about the Icelandic language is that apparently they need three words to spell “stop.” It’s no wonder they have tight speed limits, by the time you’re done reading the sign you’ve run into whatever you were supposed to stop for.

And so, once the road repair people let us through, we headed on down the highway to our next Icelandic adventure, which we hoped would result in our finding a pot o’ gold.

Spoiler alert: we didn’t.

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Where’s the best place to get ice?

Due to surviving into our mid-60’s and being retired, confusion has become our constant companion. For example, when Carolyn told me to put “ice” on my grocery shopping list, by the time the faint echoes of the request bubbled up again inside my brain, I had lost track of exactly what I was supposed to do, although I did remember it might’ve had something to do with ice. At that moment, a Facebook post popped up involving Iceland, so naturally I found myself looking into flights to Iceland. Carolyn was a bit confused when I triumphantly told her I had booked two tickets to Iceland, thinking I had fulfilled her wishes just as ordered. Oh, well, gotta love Europe!

Eventually we learned that she had actually asked me to put “rice” on the shopping list.

Good thing there isn’t a Riceland in the world… unless it’s as gorgeous as Iceland. But that’s not likely, because if they had a “Miss Country” beauty pageant, the other countries would all storm out during the swimsuit competition after Iceland saunters out and promptly blows its top off, which would of course send all the male voters into a frenzy and guarantee Iceland the top prize.

As it turns out, Iceland did exactly that about two days after we left, so we missed a good eruption, sadly. Plus we came back without any ice.

I’m both happy and sorry to say that despite our years of travel photography experience, there is nothing I can show you in this post that will truly capture the majesty and beauty that we saw. But, I know you’ve paid good money to read this so I will try my best. I’ll start out with this scene at the airport, which was taken not long before boarding, and made me worry that this low-cost airline we were using might have so many problems that we might be the only ones on the flight. Turns out we were seated at the wrong gate. It’s a wonder we get anywhere successfully nowadays.

Once we landed and settled in, it took us a while to get our bearings and figure out our exact exploration plan. First of all, the place names in Iceland are pretty much impossible for a non-Icelander to pronounce and/or remember. So if you look at a map with all these place names, you not only have no idea what they are, but you have little ability to memorize them in any way. I mean, look at this map, which was more or less a billboard at a roadside stop. I stared at it a while and realized it was going to be about as much help as my growing a third nipple.

Eventually we figured out that it we just drive on the “Ring Road,” which is the one good road that encircles all of Iceland, and watched for picnic table signs, we’d eventually see everything there was to see. Because in Iceland, if it’s very far off the Ring Road, you’d better be driving a 4×4 plus be authorized to do so by the car rental company. Which is fine because there are plenty of interesting things to see without going 4×4, and they kindly put picnic tables in small spots by the side of the road where you can gaze upon waterfalls or glaciers or mountains or vast lava fields or your navel. Accordingly, a very fine sightseeing plan is just to hop in your car and start along the Ring Road and keep your eyes peeled. Easy peasy, once we figured that out.

So because it doesn’t matter what the actual process is, I’m going to display the photos in alphabetical order according to the geotags on each photo. The location names are kind of a hoot, so that’s partly why I decided on this system.

⁨Bláskógabyggð⁩

⁨Bláskógabyggð⁩’s photos consist of one big waterfall: Gullfoss. By the way, “foss” means “waterfall” in Icelandic. They have a saying there: “No foss, no moss.” Or they should, anyway.

Gullfoss translates to “Golden Falls,” and is part of Iceland’s famous Golden Circle, but was never featured in the Golden Girls TV show for some reason. The origin of the name is shrouded in mystery: some say it was named for the golden light that reflects in its waters at sunset, while others believe it was inspired by the rainbow created by the sun hitting the water spray, which makes me wonder if those particular people were colorblind because I’ve never seen gold in a rainbow. At the end, maybe, but never in it.

You can walk to an area that will get you all wet, but we weren’t interested in a Golden Falls shower. There are actually two parking lots, one that gets you close to the falls and the other above some stairs, where there is a nice gift shop and restaurant.

So, see? That’s pretty much how our trip went. Hop in the car for the day, stop at various sites, snapping pictures and gazing in wonder at the rugged beauty, and then on to the next one.

Fagurhólsmýri⁩

Yeah, say Fagurhólsmýri⁩ five times real fast.

This region has some of the most interesting and exciting things to see in all of Iceland.

All we had to do was outrun this rainstorm that kept looming behind us.

There are a lot of waterfalls in Iceland, mostly on account of the water. And gravity. As you’re driving along the Ring Road you just spot them (or the picnic table sign), and then pull over, marvel at the beauty, snap a few photos, and then get in the car and immediately ask where the next restroom is. Old peoples needs their toilets, y’know, especially after being next to that much rushing water.

I don’t know about you, but I think these scenes are real perty-like. There’s definitely something about standing out in the world looking at some of its most beautiful scenery that makes you feel glad to be alive, as well as happy there are still places where you can look out over a great and beautiful expanse and see no one except your honey bunny.

These interesting rock formations are called Basalt Columns, and are basically nature’s attempt at architecture. Basalt makes up about 90% of all the lava rock on earth, and when it cools, due to scientific reasons too complicated to explain here, it sometimes forms these straight columns. (Actually it’s probably not that complicated but when I looked it up there were a lot of words.) Anyway, I think they were really made by the same aliens who made the great pyramids. I mean, if you have the technology to travel hundreds of light years across a universe, the first thing you’re going to want to do when you land is play with rocks, right?

I took this picture for my permanent collection just in case I need blackmail material on Carolyn. Here my favorite scofflaw is traipsing across the grass despite the red line through the human on the sign. She claims she thought it only pertained to men because they used the same male image on bathroom signs. Tell it to the judge.

We took a buttload of photos from the car (a buttload is roughly equivalent to 534), because we were surrounded constantly by such gorgeous scenery. Again, the photos don’t do it justice, you really have to see it in person. For now, I guess you have to settle for BaldSasquatch. But think about adding Iceland to your travel bucket list, it’s hard to imagine anyone walking away from Iceland disappointed in the visit.

That isn’t a volcano blowing in the background, but that field of black rock is as a result of a major lava flow. There were places that looked absolutely otherworldly.

We did frequently marvel at the individual homes or tiny settlements consisting of a handful of houses in the middle of nowhere. I mean, I was certain I saw a sign that said “Nowhere,” with a smaller sign underneath that said, “And you’re in the middle of it.” Anyway, living that remote takes special kind of introvert. If any of those people are extroverts they probably turn into serial killers, or politicians.

We saw lots of horses along the way. The Icelandic horse is a special breed, smaller than most (but they’re not ponies), and direct descendents of the horses originally brought there by the Vikings. The Icelandic horse is known for its outstanding ability to cross rough terrain and are excellent swimmers. The law in Iceland is that you can’t import a horse, and if any horse leaves the country, it can never return, because it might have some big horse cooties on it. Or in it, actually.

The Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon is a lagoon formed by the runoff from Breiðamerkurjökull Glacier (which is often pronounced, “Breiðamerkurjökull”), and is yet another spectacular site where photos cannot do it justice. It’s a bay filled with chunks and pieces of ice, looking much like something you’d find in Antarctica. The water flows into the ocean and feeds Breiðamerkursandur beach. While “Breiðamerkursandur” is obviously one of the easiest Icelandic place names to pronounce, for some reason “Diamond Beach” became a more popular nickname for the beach.

The whole place is also a location lots of photographers use for an exotic backdrop. While we were there there was a photo shoot being done with a model who looked absolutely delighted to be standing in freezing cold weather wearing nothing but a flowy skirt and some aluminum foil boots.

We looked and looked for diamonds, hoping to pay for the trip with what we found, but all we saw were these bits and pieces of a glacier (often called “ice”), so we never could figure out why they call it Diamond Beach. The word “Breiðamerkursandur” means “sandy beach” in Icelandic, so I’m guessing that the Diamond Beach nickname came as a result of it taking just as long to pronounce “Breiðamerkursandur” as it takes the earth to forge a diamond.

And so we hit the road again and on to the next beautiful site, which will be presented in the next edition of Bald Sasquatch because we can already see you’ve finished your business on the toilet and are ready to attack life slightly lighter than when you started reading this entry.

So we’ll leave you with this photo of what our stupid rental car (more on the pitiful Ford Puma later… what a hunk ‘o poorly designed junk!), which felt like it needed to remind us every time we stopped the car to look for occupants in the rear seat. I’m not sure who forgot who in the past, but some Ford engineer must’ve thought it was a big problem. Now, if it came up as soon as I got in the car because there was a murderer hiding back there, then they’d be on to something. But if you’re gonna forget your kid or someone back there and only be reminded by this message as you get out of the car, well, all I can say is the Ford Puma is the car for you! And I’m sorry for that!

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