June 7 – Lake Lagarfljót and Drive through the Highlands. Dettifoss and Selfoss

It’s a long day of driving today with lots of sights to see.  We stopped for a couple of pictures of Lake Lagarfljót before heading off into the highlands.  

The scenery here is very different than most of what we have seen in the southern part of the island.  It feels very much like highlands…or maybe like Tibet without the snow.  Either way it feels remote and beautiful.

As usual there were a lot of unnamed waterfalls…

Plus we had a great stop at Dettifoss,

 

and Selfoss (Paul had already seen the latter two falls on a cruise shore excursion but Mary still needed to see them).

The Jokulsa a Fjollum River that flows between the two falls.  

And the canyon below Dettifoss.

After driving some more we stopped to take a hike...

up to Hljóðaklettar, part of a 6 km long crater row…

lots of interesting rock formations and more basalt columns.

We then made it out to the Ásbyrji Canyon for a short walk.  The horseshoe-shaped canyon was created when Odin’s (Thor’s) eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, touhed one of its feet to the ground, making the horseshoe shape.  The alternative story is that it was most likely created by catastrophic glacial flooding of the river, Jӧkulsá áFjӧllum, after the last Ice Age.  Either way it was a pretty impressive canyon. 

We look a hike at the end of the canyon and found a small pool tucked against the massive canyon wall.

The rest of the day was driving.  We drove by Ӧxarfjӧrdur, another broad, sweeping fjord with a sand beach….

and Skjálfandi Bay…

to Húsavik in time for dinner.  Húsavik was one of our ports of call during our cruise.  We didn’t have time to see much of it during the cruise so we had lunch and did a little bit of wandering before we hit the road again.

Love the sign about free-range sheep in Iceland. They were ahead of the times. 

Our hotel is right on Lake Mývatn.  Right across from our hotel was the Skútustaðagígar False Craters or pseudo craters.  Pseudo craters are formed when lava flows across water and steam is created that makes the craters.  Normal craters are formed by the volcanic eruption itself.  We took a short walk out around the craters.  It was cold and very windy so we didn’t stay long.

Around 9 pm we looked out the window and it looked like it was 3 in the afternoon.  It does stay light long -I think sunset was around 11:30, sunrise about 3 hours later, and it never gets very dark, just goes to twilight.