Ridiculously full day. Started out at seven in the morning roaming around on a volcano, 'cause that's how I start my days now, and then revisited a number of sites around Myvatn including Vindbelgjarfjall. Lonely Planet describes the mountain thusly: "the easy climb up 529m-high Vindbelgjarfjall, west of the lake, offers one of the best views across the water." Lonely Planet's editors either just returned from an expedition up Mt. Everest or else they forgot the "...NOT!" after "easy". In any case, the views are inspiring and a little exercise is always a good thing, so I climbed the beast both days. Today two little kids were already on the trail, and seeing as I'm competitive to an unhealthy degree I figured I could catch them and pass them along the trail. Lesson learned - Little Kid A went up the trail like a mountain goat and absolutely dominated me, although Little Kid B fell by the wayside about halfway up. Whether it's healthy to compete against little kids in mountain climbing is a subject that can be dealt with later in a professional setting.

After chasing birds, more hiking, and other fun the next stop was at the Myvatn Nature Baths for a shower and some hot spring time. The notable events from this stop: first, during the mandatory pre-hot spring cleaning the showers were open and very close together. Having a hairy, large, butt-naked man scrubbing vigorously in the shower next to you is not good, and especially not good when you have mantouch issues. Second, the hot springs are nice - they make your skin pretty. Third, bikinis rule; there can never be too many good things said about them. And finally, in the changing rooms on the way out the little naked singer appeared. Maybe being a parent makes having a little naked guy walking around singing seem normal, but to this childless thirty-something it seemed just a bit surreal.

The marathon of a day continued after the nature baths with some photography followed by a longish drive along a four-wheel-drive-only road to visit Dettifoss, the largest waterfall in Europe. It's listed as being the largest waterfall "by volume", although since there are other waterfalls downstream it's mildly confusing as to why this particular waterfall got designated the largest. In any case, even shrouded in dense fog (visibility is probably fifty feet) it's a hugely impressive sight, but a warning to any future visitors - the spray blasting off of this waterfall will soak you; unfortunately my nice clean clothes are now quite damp after hiking down to the canyon's edge. It's now well after one in the morning, and as sleepiness is creeping in I'm stuck for a place to spend the night - the Dettifoss parking lot is the first place in Iceland where there has actually been a sign posted saying that sleeping in cars is prohibited, so I'm off to find another spot to park the Wondermobile for the few remaining hours of this evening.

I finally found a spot to sleep and headed to bed at 2:30 last night, then got up at 8:30 to revisit the waterfalls. Two days ago I was debating skipping Dettifoss altogether, and instead ended up visiting it three times - go figure. It's a pretty awesome waterfall ("awesome" as in it shakes the ground), and after the fog lifted and visibility increased to more than two feet I found a placard that clarified the "largest waterfall" confusion from yesterday - the placard states that it is the most powerful waterfall in Europe. p = mv and all that, apparently.

There was a bunch of hiking today in Jokulsargljufur National Park, although I'm old and sore so not as much distance was covered as yesterday. The trails led to some odd lava formations, through the river gorge, and past several waterfalls. I took a look at Dettifoss from both the east and west side of the river - distance across the river canyon: probably two hundred yards, driving time: about two hours. Unlike the United States they aren't concerned with saving people from their own stupidity here, so there are no railings or safety warnings around the waterfalls, which provides some amazing opportunities - I was able to sit on a sheer cliff with the waterfall roaring next to me for a good hour this afternoon, alone to think and enjoy the scene.

After leaving the eastern side of Dettifoss the journey continued on its loop back to Myvatn and onwards towards the west coast. While driving through Myvatn a bank of fog came in from the fjords that literally looked like something out of a Stephen King novel, and it went from blue skies and sunny to druid-like in about two seconds. The parking spot (for now) is by a waterfall further inland, and barring someone kicking me out the plan is to hide in the fog here tonight and then head on to the western fjords tomorrow. Sadly there are only two full days remaining in the trip before I have to head back to Reykjavik to return the Wondermobile on the tenth, with the return flight scheduled to depart on the afternoon of the eleventh; with luck the weather will stay good and the adventures will continue until then.

Perfect weather, lots of hiking. Myvatn and its lake is very pretty, with lots of birds and lots of geologic stuff that blows up. Europe and North America are moving apart at a rate of two centimeters per year here, and the result is a volcano, some hot springs, lots of lava flows, and too many other geothermal things for me to remember. Any geologist reading this right now is probably all like "son of a..." - sorry, I don't know from rocks.

The weather report claims that the wet and blowy stuff will be staying away for a few days, so the plan is to stay here for at least another day. I've been spending nights sleeping in the Wondermobile, and can say with some authority that a Suzuki Jimmy will not let anyone who is over three foot six sleep comfortably; the contortions required to lay down in the back seat while stretching my legs into the driver seat are worthy of Cirque du Soleil. As much as I'm enjoying this return to my grungy backpacker roots, the shower and bed that's waiting at Hotel Keflavik on 10 July is looking better and better.

The majority of the day was spent under overcast skies in Husavik, the whale watching capital of Iceland. After the close encounters in Antarctica the standard for whale experiences has been raised unreasonably high, so instead of going on a boat ride I visited the whale museum. The museum is excellent and features skeletons from several beached whales that do a good job conveying how big the animals are since... well, since they're skeletons of whales, and are life-sized and stuff. Interesting facts learned about orcas: the females live to be 90 (!), and the name "killer whale" was bastardized in translation - early Basque whalers saw orcas attacking larger whales and named them "whale killers". Interesting facts about sperm whales: they can dive to two miles in depth and hold their breath for two hours; no word on the origin of the name, and I won't make any guesses since my mom reads this journal.

An interesting aspect to the museum was the fact that Iceland, along with Norway and Japan, is on the short list of countries actively engaging in whaling. There is a history of eating whale meat in Iceland going back over a thousand years, and the Icelandic word describing a beached whale essentially translates as "hitting the lottery" since back in the day a beached whale could feed several families through the winter. Things are different now, however, and while Icelanders will still consume minke whale meat in small amounts, the majority of the meat from the endangered fin whales that were killed in 2006 was never purchased and remains frozen in industrial freezers. While minimal whaling for minke whales might be seen as justified, the push from the whaling industry for larger harvests of minke, fin, and potentially other whales just doesn't make much sense, especially considering that revenue from whale watching far exceeds whaling revenues. The position on the issue in this museum was clear, if muted, and they posted an interesting cartoon on the subject from a Reykjavik newspaper that showed a whale arguing with whalers that an intelligent animal shouldn't be killed, and ended with the whalers shooting the whale and then asking "Hey, did we just shoot a talking whale?"

After re-reading the guidebook it turns out that the Langanges Peninsula is famous among mariners for its thick and persistent fog, so rather than wandering off into the morning mist I spent a couple of hours with the birds and the seas before turning back for fog-free lands. Once out of the fog banks the weather was good all day, and the scenery of Northern Iceland is tremendous - amidst lakes, hills and seascapes were birds including loons, whooper swans, red-throated divers, phalaropes, plovers, whimbrels, snipes, oystercatchers, eider ducks, harlequin ducks, gulls, jaegers, and numerous others that I couldn't identify.

Amidst the nature and scenery the day's main event involved another act of stupidity. It was my assumption that Iceland was located in the North Atlantic, but the Lonely Planet has been taunting me with two words - Arctic Ocean. If in fact Iceland really is in the North Atlantic and the book's editors were merely playing a practical joke in the hopes that some fool would try to add another ocean to his swimming tally then congratulations to the editors, because they found their fool. Barring any mischief by the guidebook staff there are now four oceans that I've swum in, and surprisingly today's soaking seemed ever-so-slightly warmer than the glacial dip a short time ago. In this case the water was unfortunately shallower so entry and exit took considerably more time and the brain was able to more strenuously argue its objections prior to the full dive into the freezing cold. Rod previously commented that he doesn't get why I need to jump into cold water - luckily by definition irrational acts don't have to make sense and it can be assumed that some sort of brain damage is the ultimate cause.

UPDATE: According to Wikipedia the northern part of Iceland does indeed touch the Arctic Ocean. Boo yah.

God spent most of the day recharging the waterfalls, but the wet stuff finally quit around 6:30 PM and the big bright thing made a brief appearance. The eastern fjords of Iceland are supposed to be incredible, but with visibility sometimes reduced to four inches it's impossible to be be one hundred percent certain - Lonely Planet will have to remain the authority on the subject.

Since there's still a lot of time remaining until the return home I made a detour up north to the Langanes Peninsula, which the guidebook describes as one of the loneliest parts of Iceland. Having spent over two hours driving the fifty kilometer "road" out here, it seems like the guidebook has it right. There are a handful of abandoned farms, a lot of birds, an occasional sheep, some rolling hills, and a blustery coast, but almost no signs of people - there have been two other cars all night, and no inhabited buildings. One very cool sight while coming out was a herd of 20-30 nearly wild horses running along the coast - they don't like cars, and it was impressive seeing so many animals all take off at full speed across the countryside. The "road" ended in the midst of a long-abandoned fishing village so I'm camped here for the evening with winds howling, dozens of birds flying by every minute, and some impressive sea cliffs disappearing into the fog along the peninsula's southwest coast. If the weather cooperates there will be a lot of exploring tomorrow, and if it doesn't then it may be time to make an offering to Thor to try and get the sun back again.

Today started out looking like good weather, and has turned into one of those days that usually requires a guy in a yellow raincoat on TV to be saying "The full force of this category three storm is now becoming apparent...". At the moment I'm parked in the Wondermobile next to a lighthouse, and the car is shaking as waves of horizontal rain go tearing past; this is definitely the strongest storm I've been in recently, even more impressive than the two big storms at the beginning of this trip.

Aside from Mother Nature's fury it's otherwise been an unremarkable day. I slept late (8:00 AM), visited the glacial lagoon, and then covered some ground driving towards the eastern side of the country. Nature-wise there's a sheltered bit of ocean about a half mile from my current parking spot with several hundred swans in it, and I also passed a sign with a picture of a reindeer on it; it would be more notable had I seen an actual reindeer, but when the weather is this bad I'll take what I can get.