The Visit!

Bonus!

On the way to Snaefellsnes

Lunch in the car

Golden Sand Beach

Why didn't Daddy come?

Mossy Mats

On the way to the dramatic beach

It doesn't look nearly as dramatic as it actually was!

Þingvellir

Gullfoss

The lava tube

Their Guesthouse

Fancy ladies?

South coast!

Solheimajokull (one of Myrdalsjokull's outlet glaciers)

Glacier/Proglacial Margin

Lunch out of the wind!

Beach at Vik

Myrdalsjokull

Their cozy room!

I have been debating about how I was going to attack this blog post because I have a million things I want to say about the week I spent with my mom and sis, but I don't want to make this an oppressively long post... I think I am just going to go for it, but maybe keep extreme details to a minimum, except when they are absolutely necessary.

Just from this introduction, one can probably tell that it was a great week, jam-packed (Muir-McCune family style) with fun trips! We rented a car three out of the 5.5 days that they were here. After hitchhiking all over, having the ease of transport that comes with a rental car felt absolutely BLISSFUL! Having the car allowed us to get to quite a few places, although, of course, there were tons of things we didn't see.

Myrica and my mom flew in early on Sunday morning. They were expecting me to meet them at the bus station near my building, but I surprised them by catching the 4 am flybus and meeting them at the airport! I was paranoid about missing them, so I got there wellllllll before I needed to. Ah well, better safe than sorry. When I left, most of my friends were still up and about from the night before, which seemed pretty funny. When they finally got there, it was so exciting to see them come out from behind the sliding opaque doors! Myrica said that she could see people looking at us happily during our initial reunion, which was particularly fun for us since we all love observing random people's reunions at airports.

We took the flybus back to Reykjavik and then trudged and lugged our way through the driving wind and rain back to Gamli. Myrica was not impressed with the weather, especially since she wasn't properly dressed for a little bit of a storm. Shortly after getting home, we all sacked out in my room for a couple of hours, which felt super nice. After waking up feeling at least slightly refreshed, we took their bags over to Baldersbra (their guesthouse just across the pond, maybe a three minute run from my building) and then began our walk about Reykjavik. We walked up Laugavegur (the main shopping street) and ate a little something at one of my favorite cafes, Jomahlind (that'd be a phonetic spelling...). With food in our bellies, we marched on to the famous weekend flea market (Kolaportið) where we got a little bit of food and a cute hat to send to Todd in New Zealand (don't worry, he somehow figured it out without me saying anything already, so I'm not ruining the surprise...). We then spent the rest of the day traipsing about, seeing things like the hot pool I go to most often, the harbor, the library, etc. They also got to experience my beloved bonus grocery store, which was exciting for me! For dinner, we attempted to find this organic fish and chips place, but wound up eating some non-thai thai food instead. It tasted really good, but didn't taste like any Thai food I had eaten before!

The next day, I went to my morning class and then met up with them at about 10. My mom had rented a car (and learned about the rules of the road!) while I had been in class, so we were able to take off shortly after I got home. We were planning on visiting places along the south coast and going to the blue lagoon, but a navigational error took us to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula instead! I realized that we were going the wrong way on Hwy 1 about 15 minutes out of town, but instead of retracing our steps, we decided just to retool and go on to Snæfellsnes, a place that we were planning on going to later in the week anyway. I was a little worried that the weather was going to be nasty, but it wound up cooperating beautifully! Because Snæfellsnes is a fair distance from Reykjavik, we spent much of the day in the car, but that was okay because the drive was gorgeous. Myrica and my mom found the 6.4 km long tunnel that goes under the ocean a bit disconcerting, but we didn't get a flat tire inside, get stuck, have it collapse on us, see a leek, or experience any of the other disasterous things they were picturing! Once actually on the peninsula, we saw lots of amazingly lush (with moss) lava fields, picturesque cinder cones, striking basalt beaches, tall, snowy basaltic mountains, lichens galore, and much more. I think one of the highlights of the day for all of us was a stop at an absolutely MAGNIFICENT basalt beach. The entire beach was made up of smooth basalt pebbles and boulders and waves were SMASHING against the shore. We think that the shore must have dropped off dramatically, because big, blue waves would roll in and not break until they hit the beach. It was dramatic, to say the least. I'll post pictures of it, because my words can't do it justice. In retrospect, I think Snæfellsnes was a good choice for our first excursion, because it gave Myric and my mom a great taste of just how stunning Iceland can be. Or actually, usually is.

After dinner at one of the pubs downtown (the same place where I had my experience with rotten shark...) and a stop at the 1011 for some delicious gummy candies, we headed back to their guesthouse for the night.

We had the rental car for Tuesday as well, so the next morning, we popped back in the car and started our way around the famous Golden Circle. Our first stop was Þingvellir, the site of Iceland's first parliament, Alþingi, and more importantly (for me) the site of the rift valley between the North American and Eurasian plate. It was pretty cool to stand on the North American Plate and be able to SEE the Eurasian Plate across the rift!

After a bit of a walk-around at Þingvellir, we got back into the car and headed towards Geysir. Due to a closed road, we had to take the long way around to Geysir, but that was okay because it was a beautiful drive along the east shore of Þingvallavatn, the largest natural lake in Iceland. Arriving at Geysir felt a little like I was arriving at some place in a different country-- there were so many more tourists than I was used to seeing! We walked out to the area where there were lots of little boiling pots of water and geysers, including "Geysir," the oldest known geysir in the world! People were all crowded around Strokkur, the geysir that predictably erupts about every 10 min, which definitely alerted us the fact that we were not in the United States. There would be no way that people would be allowed to get as close to something like that back home. While we were leaving, we saw a few people get absolutely DRENCHED by the geysir! It went off sooner than it was predicted, so a group of people were caught standing in the wrong place! I guess the water must have cooled in the wind before it landed on them, because they didn't seem particularly distressed.

After Geysir, we drove a bit further up the road to Gullfoss, one of Iceland's most impressive waterfalls. Our Lonely Planet had warned us that Gullfoss was sometimes a bit of a letdown for visitors, but it definitely was not! It was so, so, so beautiful and powerful! The spray was chilly, but it was definitely worth getting a bit indampiated to have the opportunity to get close to the falls! As we walked down the path towards the rock that extends out over the top of the falls, we got an increasingly magnificent view.

I think I may start to be a little bit more brief, because I am realizing that this is going to wind up being an incredibly long document if I keep going at this pace! After Gulfoss, we started heading in the general direction of Reykjavik. A few of my friends had done the Golden Circle the day before, and so they advised us about a few neat places to stop in addition to the main attractions. One of those places was a 1300 m long lava tube that we never would have noticed from the road. We walked a ways into the tube, admiring the huge piles of snow that had accumulated beneath skylights in the tube and attempting to keep sure footing. At the place we turned around, the floor was covered with ice stalagmites from water droplets! They were so cute! Unfortunately, Myrica’s camera ran out of batteries at this point during the day, so we couldn’t do much in the way of photo documentation.

After emerging from the lava tube, we made the impromptu decision to tack on the Blue Lagoon to the end of the day! We decided to drive there the back way instead of going through Reykjavik, which turned out to be both a good and bad decision. The views were amazing, but the drive was looonngg on slow, gravel roads. We made it, however, and got to enjoy the Blue Lagoon for a little over an hour. We all felt like we’d had enough by that point, so it worked out perfectly!

On Wednesday, I had to give a presentation in my Quaternary Environments class, so Myrica and my mom entertained themselves while I went to class until 3 pm. At that point, my mom walked up to the Perlan while I ran back and forth, periodically checking in with her. It made my run more enjoyable, because I always had someone to be looking for! Iceland continued to cooperate and gave my mom some fantastic views of the city and surrounding area. I don’t know if I have emphasized enough up this point how AMAZING the weather had been. Of course, there had been bad moments, but on the whole the weather was pretty perfect much of the time that they were here. After much debate, we decided to get dressed up and go out to dinner on Wednesday night. We went to this little place downtown that I had walked by many, many times but never imagined that I would actually get to go to! Myrica dressed my mom and me in her forceful way “Sara. Put this on. No. Change your tights.” Etc, which both my mom and I like. We feel like we are in good hands when Myric is in charge of the clothing operation. We tried to get a picture of our outfits, but had a little bit of difficulty getting a picture that really captured it (as you can see in the pictures above). Dinner was delicious AND to top it all off, we saw Northern Lights on the way home!!! I couldn’t believe their luck! They were faint, but unmistakable. Amazing, eh?

Thursday was another adventure day—this time along the south coast. As per usual, the drive was beautiful. We stopped in at the famous bathroom at Skogafoss. It was so fun to show them where we had spent so much time. Looking at it (and smelling it) again, I was really impressed that we stayed in there and had such a good time! While on the south coast, we spent the majority of the time we were outside of the car clambering around on the proglacial landforms at Solheimajokull (an outlet glacier of Myrdalsjokull). It was particularly exciting for me, because I think this is one of the places where I am going to do fieldwork in May. I can’t wait! We climbed up a little ridge to get a good look at the glacier, and it was certainly dramatic. The stuff we were climbing on was covered in beautiful crustos lichens that were overlaying glacial striations. Pretty cool. We made sure to collect some rocks that my mom could bring home to my dad! It was windy, windy, windy, but not too bad when we were bundled up and moving around. After walking down to the glacial margin, we climbed back up a little ways and found a nice little nook that was out of the wind where we could eat lunch. After lunch, we hiked back down to the car and set off for Vik (the town that I was attempting to get to when we wound up in the bathroom). As it was already sort of late in the day, we didn’t spend too much time in Vik, but we did walk down to see the spires of basalt sticking up out of the blue ocean and the rounded, black sand beaches. On the way home, we stopped in Selfoss to get ingredients for dinner and so that my mom could buy me groceries! It was so fun to get fresh stuff that I never feel like I can justify when I am buying things for myself!

Upon returning to Reykjavik, we cooked spaghetti in Gamli and then ate and talked with some of the people I live with. It was fun for them to get to know my family and vice versa, I do believe. I do wish that they had had more opportunities to interact, but you can’t do everything, I suppose! After cleaning up dinner and hanging out for a little bit more, we walked back to their guest house for bed.

The next day was a sad day in mudville, as it was the day they had to leave! I couldn’t believe how QUICKLY it came! Actually, I could believe it, but it still made me sad! We spent the morning walking around Reykjavik, taking care of a few select shopping missions. I needed a new pair of jeans, which we accomplished, and Myric was feeling the need for a few accessories… My mom made a good point when she said that it was good Myrica hadn’t come to Reykjavik a few years earlier when she still shopped like a mad man! Her bank would have been pretty broken after seeing all the cute stuff that Iceland has to offer! After lunch, I, unfortunately, had to go give a volcanology presentation at one, so with a tearful goodbye, I forced myself to get it together and go talk about La Palma in front of my class. I was not that happy of a camper, but I recovered pretty quickly. I am just not much of a fan of goodbyes! While I was in class, they successfully caught the Fly bus and made it home without a hitch! It is so fun to know that they have been here and can picture many of the things and people that I talk about! I wish that everyone could come visit me.

My oh my. My fingers are exhausted and I imagine you are probably SICK of reading! Also, I’m in charge of cooking tonight, so I best go get started on my cheese biscuits and corn chowder! It is snoowwing to beat the band right now… spring still seems a ways off—although there are a few crocuses blooming around town, much to my delight! Alex, Libby, Sam, and I leave for Spain next Monday, so the next entry may be from a new foreign country. Wild!