{"id":744,"date":"2021-06-25T06:50:43","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T11:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/?p=744"},"modified":"2023-12-26T21:48:05","modified_gmt":"2023-12-27T02:48:05","slug":"thur-june-24-day-9-to-the-eastern-fjords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/?p=744","title":{"rendered":"Day 9: To the Eastern Fjords"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Woke up to a beautiful bright sunny day in Myvatn. Perfect for day for driving to the Eastern Fjords.\u00a0 We could see two new distant mountains due to the extra clear skies.\u00a0 Our target for the evening is H\u00c3\u00b6fdavik, located in the largest forest in Iceland. But there are not many forests in Iceland, so it is really special. This forest is also on a large glacial lake and in it is their famous giant worm monster. Kind of a relative to Nessie in Scotland and Champ in Lake Champlain the worm monster has a long history any many sightings.\u00a0 It was last seen and captured on video in 2012.\u00a0 You may remember the international news coverage of it.\u00a0\u00a0

As we left Myvatn, we had to join the Ring Road again and passed by the geothermal mud pots again.\u00a0 They looked very different in the bright sunlight.\u00a0 We snapped a few photos as we traveled down the road. We could see snow covered mountains shinning brightly in the distance.\u00a0 As the days and miles passed, they grew closer and changed in appearance.

Some of the landscape was very lunar looking, lots of gray dust and rocks in a gently sloping landscape. There were no signs of sheep this area.\u00a0 The usual sign indicating the farmsteads names were missing.\u00a0 The landscape slowly came alive the further east we went. Changing to slightly greener mountains and steep valleys with melting snow and seasonal waterfalls.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Snow<\/a>\r\n
This is a major landmark, we could see it starting to appear on the horizon not to far out of Myvatn. Here you can see it against a very rocky lunar landscape. I zoomed in a good deal to bring the mountain closer.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\"Pointy<\/a>\r\n
More of the plain, these pointy mountains have lost all their snow.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\"Snowy<\/a>\r\n
These snow capped mountains were HUGE. You could see them from very far away.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We made a few little stops to look at points of interest, the landscape, and to grab a few photos along the way.\u00a0 One stop of interest was a farm that had some traditional turf sheep houses on them and an old smithy that has been there since 1550.\u00a0 However, the smithy was mostly likely built on the site of a much earlier and abandoned church.\u00a0\u00a0 The craftsmanship has endured intact and the buildings could still be used today (if they weren’t on display for touristas).\u00a0 The unusual construction of both types of buildings was fantastic.\u00a0 The walls were at least 4 large stones thick, topped with many layers of turf. Inside the wooden roof made from birch tree trunks that appeared filled with what looked like lichens and outside grass.\u00a0 They were very dark but snug and keep the wind out very efficiently.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Sod<\/a>\r\n
Here\u00e2\u20ac™s the full view of the Sod Barn. It was uses to house sheep.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\"Sod<\/a>\r\n
You can see the lovey stonework and layers of sod and grassed used to build the sod barn.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\"An<\/a>\r\n
An old Smithy exterior<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\"Reindeer\r\n
These guys decorated the outer wall of the old smithy<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We started looking for a canyon many miles down a dirt road, but the road turned into an F-road (mountain road), which the RV is not rated for, so we turned around and headed back to the Ring Road.\u00a0 Taking that detour did offer up some beautiful views of the valleys that we would have missed along the Ring Road.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"View\r\n
Here\u00e2\u20ac™s a view of the valley form a gravel road. After turning down it and joking another road, we discovered it was an F-road 1\/2 way down it, so turned around. But it was worth the detour to see this valley and it\u00e2\u20ac™s beautiful blue river and lovely farms.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Our next stop was one of the larger towns of Egilsstadir.\u00a0 The campground here is more than just your average campground.\u00a0 Here they have a caf\u00c3\u00a9 and bar, a hostel, a nice communal kitchen and dining room, a living room \/ lounge area, really clean bathrooms and showers, and a nice laundry room.\u00a0 It was like an outpost on an old western trail, attracting lots of people (the most we\u00e2\u20ac™ve seen out and about in the countryside so far) and travelers of all kinds (like the solo bicyclist who hadn\u00e2\u20ac™t done laundry in ten days).\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Like him, we were able to do our laundry at last!
Icelanders are very attuned to the weather which accounts for all the people we\u00e2\u20ac™re seeing in the campgrounds around Egilsstadir.\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac™s one of the first stretches of nice weather (60 + degrees), which had brought out all the campers in these parts.\u00a0 Since the weather is not so good in other parts of the countries this week, so they have flocked to this area.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"A\r\n
Driving to our lake side forest campground, the lupine led the way.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We will be meeting up with our friend Bob, who has traveled up to Akureyri today. We\u00e2\u20ac™ll be taking time to tour the area so he should catch up with us sometime tomorrow.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Looks like there is weather heading our way.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Lake\r\n
This lake was not blue or green but much darker and there was a golden hue to the highlights in the waves. There is weather head on that mountain.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Woke up to a beautiful bright sunny day in Myvatn. Perfect for day for driving to the Eastern Fjords.\u00a0 We could see two new distant mountains due to the extra clear skies.\u00a0 Our target for the evening is H\u00c3\u00b6fdavik, located in the largest forest in Iceland. But there are not many forests in Iceland, so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[193,7,115],"tags":[117],"class_list":["post-744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-193","category-iceland","category-iceland-2021","tag-ring-road","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=744"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2045,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions\/2045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}