June 8 – Lake Mývatn

We have the full day in this area and it is sunny although still windy and rather cold.  The first stop was a crater, Hvefjall.  We hiked up to the top and part way around.  

Good views of the crater…

and the surrounding area.

The views of the lake were awesome.

One very great thing about travel in Iceland is that they have really nice bathrooms everywhere for the tourists...usually accompanied by an equally nice tourist information kiosk

We also did some driving around Lake Mývatn...

and on to Námafjall Geothermal Area with mud pots and steam springs.  Smelled like sulfur but were interesting and pretty.  Similar to Yellowstone in the US but not as big.  Notice the lack of barriers.

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Video of hot pot
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On the way down the hill we stopped at a wonderful small blue lake with the highly original name, Blue Lake.  From the steaming, bubbling, hissing, gurgling water spouting into the lake we assumed the water was too hot to touch

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Video of the blue lake
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Some parts of the countryside was fairly lush farmland.  However, much of it was very arid lava/volcanic areas...eerie and desolate. 

We stopped at a nearby convenience store to pick up lunch and they had a car wash (brushes on the end of a hose) so we washed the worst of the dust off the car before heading on.

We checked in at the café across the parking lot of the hotel where we had hot chocolate and Mary found some post cards.  The hotel is a regular stop for tour buses.  At one point we saw five large buses and 5 smaller bus/vans in the parking lot.  

Everyone was hitting the bathrooms and then walking around the craters.  So we decided to join them.

And of course there were sheep in the area.

This was the parking lot the following morning.  Pretty empty.

Later in the evening we had a light dinner in the hotel restaurant.