Day 187-the start of the Ring Road tour

   July 9-It was nice to get back into a tent and finally do some camping again.  Even the rain, which continued off and on during the night, did not bother us too much.  The fly leaked a little bit, but it only got Shan’s sleeping pad and pillow slightly damp, so that was not too bad.  If it had been one of the kids, though, it probably would have been a catastrophe.  They have never had the experience of sleeping in the old canvas tents that would leak wherever you touched them; that gives a person a whole different perspective on these modern tents!
   Sally got up the morning a little after 7am to make the ten minute drive to the Keflavík airport to meet her parents.  She picked them up and returned to the campsite, where Shan and the kids awake, packing up the sleeping bags.  Shan, Sally, and Jean drove off to the town of Keflavík to pick up the camping van that will be the Easleys’ home for the next ten days.   We were shown how to operate all of the appliances and then headed back to the campground, where we finished packing up.  We all drove to the Route1 rental garage in Reykjavík, where the staff worked on our “faithful steed,” as we have started to call our Toyota Corolla, while we drove to a café to eat “breakfast “at noon.

Öxaráfoss is greatly diminished compared to the
amount of water flowing over in the spring. 


   We picked up the car, shopped for camping paraphernalia and food, and drove out to Þingvellir.  This was the traditional meeting site for the Alþing, which was the representative governing body of Iceland from 930AD onwards.  The site is on the northern shore of Þingvallarvatn, which is the largest lake in Iceland.  The lake sits in a depression caused by ground subsidence as the American and Eurasian plates slowly diverge from one another.

Shan, Alex, Joslyn, Bill, Jean, and Spencer in the Almannagjá crevice.

The Icelandic flag is flying on the presumed site of the Law Rock, where the Law Speaker would recite the laws and the Alþing would meet in the Commonwealth times (930-1262AD).

Strokkur erupts.

   By this point, the Hays family has visited this site multiple times, so as soon as the Easleys had had their fill, we continued on to Geysir and then to Gullfoss, which, along with Þingvellir, comprise the “Golden Circle” of popular tourist attractions in Iceland.  We ate a meal and watched the geyser Strokkur erupt a few times at Geysir and briefly stopped to observe Gullfoss, which Jean thought was more impressive than Niagara Falls.

Bill and Jean in front of Gullfoss.

   We drove down to Skálholt, which was the residence of one of the two Icelandic bishops from the 11^th century through the 18^th century.  The buildings are all modern there now, but archaeological excavations have uncovered the remains of the buildings in use during the 1500s, so we viewed them briefly.

This was the largest building in Iceland in the 1500s. The walls of medieval turf buildings (the grassy areas) almost take up more space than the interior rooms (gravel areas)! For perspective, Alex is standing in the library (10) and Joslyn is standing in the bishop's room (11).

   We then hurried on to the Álfaskeið campground southwest of Fluðir.  The campsite was in a natural bowl in the hills and the view to the farmlands to the south was beautiful. The Easleys agreed to let Joslyn sleep on the floor in their van, which made it much less tight in the tent.  We did not have to contend with rain tonight, but the wind was quite strong.  At one point, the tent flopped over on us and Shan had to get up and restake the guide wires to keep that from happening again.  After that, we all slept soundly.