Day 1 - August 25 - Arrival

Day 1, August 25 - Arrival and Into Iceland.

Computer issues and no wifi at the campgrounds delayed getting started on this trip report.
Holly and Nathan took Gail and I early to BWI for our 2030 flight. We met Marie, who had flown in earlier from Sarasota, at the security exit and had dinner with her, then caught our Icelandair non-stop to Keflavik airport, arriving at about 0600. As the plane turned, coming into Keflavik, I saw ribbons of red-orange lava out the window from the recent, and continuing, eruption. Cleared immigration and customs and collected our bags. The rental company office didn't open until eight so we waited. They picked us up at the airport and took us to their offices where we  picked up our  motorhome. Loaded up and headed off to The Blue Lagoon. Our route to the Lagoon took us within a mile of the ribbons I'd seen from the plane - not as dramatic in daylight but smoking and spitting red , even from a distance. The road to the Blue Lagoon had been cut by earlier lava flows and the management built a detour to the entrance.

The Blue Lagoon is a mineral bath pool fed by the outflow from a large geothermal power plant. Iceland gets almost all its power from geothermal. The Lagoon is Iceland's "premier attraction" says the guidebook. It consists of a huge pool of the cooled power plant outflow, laden with dissolved minerals from inside the earth.  Guests enter at a large bathhouse, change, shower, and wade into the pool. At any one time there are hundreds of people wading around in chest-high water, some places shallower, some deeper. Each guest gets a free drink and a pat of minerals to apply on your face. The minerals are those extracted from the cooling water. We collected our drinks and did the facial thing. Gail and Marie relaxed after the flight. After about an hour we got out and had lunch there.

We headed up to Reykjavik and stopped to get a supply of groceries and turned east through Selfoss and up to Geysir. Reykjavik is Iceland's largest city with about 300,000 population. The suburbs we saw were modern and bright. The grocery store, a chain throughout the country, was smallish but well stocked. The drive east through and past Selfoss was through green, well cultivated farmland. Selfoss's geothermal plants power large green houses that grow much of the country's produce. The land turned much bleaker as we neared Geysir. Only sparse, stunted trees dotted the increasingly barren, rocky ground. This geyser gives its name to all similar geothermal features. We pulled into our first campground just below the geothermal field and set up camp. The campgrounds was a thin grove of trees and meadow. There were a few campers there, already, and more arrived through the evening.
Made supper of cold cut sandwiches and settled in.

Setting up camp, in this case, means finding a level spot for the motorhome, connecting the electric cord to the power supply box, turning on the propane supply, and turning on the mains power, water pump, heating and water heater.Читать далее