Day 144-filling in the gaps

   May 27-We spent the first part of the day around the house.  The adults did some work inside, while the kids played within and outside.  The sunny skies finally motivated us to get out and do something around mid-afternoon.  The Kaffi Munaðarnes is located in a collection of summer houses across the river from Varmaland; we had been stopping in there every few weeks since February to find out if it was open yet.  A couple weeks ago, Sally actually talked to someone there and they told her that the restaurant would be open weekend afternoons, so we decided to try it again today for a late dinner.  Success!  Since they are still gearing up for the summer tourist season, they were only serving hamburgers, so we all had one and split a 2 liter bottle of Coke.  The hamburgers were quite tasty.

   As is usually the case, though, there were surprises in store for us.  First, while talking to the owner, we discovered that she is the mother of Víkinger, who is one of the students in Joslyn's class.  He usually hangs around the restaurant, but happened to be off playing with a friend while we were there, so Joslyn was not able to play with him.  Second, the kids found a mini-golf course while walking over to the playground and Víkinger's mom told them that it was free to play, so we all grabbed balls and clubs and played a round after we were done eating.  Third, Víkinger's mother pointed out that they will have bounce houses up for the kids to play on as soon as they get them patched.  She noted that we would enjoy stopping in for coffee in the future while the kids played around on the bounce house, the mini-golf course, and the playground.  I think that she has a point and imagine that we will return at least once.

   A short distance down the road from Kaffi Munaðarnes, at the turn-off for the road to go to Varmaland, is the Baulan filling station and roadside restaurant, to which we went next for some ice cream.  While we were sitting there, Joslyn's teacher, Gróa, came in with her son to purchase motor oil.  The owners had advertised that they would knock 20 króna off the price of a liter of oil, since Iceland placed 20th in the Eurovision competition.  She came over to talk to us and invited us to stop by her house on the way back to Bifröst.  She lives less than a mile south of Bifröst in a house that we can see from our apartment.  We have been intrigued by it for the way it is set down into the lava, so we decided to take her up on her offer.
   Her husband, Birgir, was also at home when we arrived, and the two of them gave us the grand tour.  The place is very nice.  They have spent a lot of time using the surrounding lava rocks to make walls that cut down on the wind.  Birgir has also expanded the house quite a bit since they bought it in the 1979.  He pointed out some logs he used in the construction that were driftwood from northern Iceland.  He said that there used to be a lot more wood that drifted across the Arctic from Russian logging operations in Siberia, but they since have gotten better at catching the logs that float down the rivers, so fewer make it out to sea.
   Birgir also explained more about the recent history of the local area.  His grandfather bought the eponymous farm on the north side of lake Hreðavatn in 1914.  He subsequently built a hotel for visitors to enjoy the lake and started reforesting the farmland in the 1930s.  In the early 1950s he gave the Icelandic cooperative movement land for for their Cooperative College, which was Bifröst's designation at the time.  It was moved from Reykjavík to its current location in 1955.  While this land donation was at least partially driven by philanthropy, his grandfather's financial interest in the preexisting restaurant next door to the donated land probably didn't hurt!  Birgir spent one year at his grandfather's lodge as a child and subsequently followed in his uncle's footsteps to become the forest ranger for the western quarter of Iceland.  It was very fortuitous that we ran into Birgir and that he told us these stories, because they helped to make sense of a large amount of disparate information that we had collected in our time here.

A typical evening in the apartment.

   Upon returning home, the kids all got out bicycles and rode them around campus.  Shan went out and helped Spencer briefly and that was all he needed.  Spencer can now start and stop himself without any problem and cruises over smooth surfaces under almost complete control.  Shan and the girls rode their bikes down south on a biking and hiking path to the river Hrauná, which runs along the southern edge of the lava flow, emptying Hreðavatn into the Norðurá.  The girls rode back home for supper, but Shan explored the river and the lava around it for a short bit on foot, before returning home.