Second Day

I slept really well and woke up bright and early, about 5 AM. The sun was shining brightly high in the sky as if it had never set, which for all practical purposes, it hadn't. The guesthouse offered breakfast, but not for several more hours, so I put on my hiking boots and headed up into the hills behind the guesthouse.

A herd of Icelandic horses belonging to the guesthouse grazes in front of a giant field of rhubarb, which apparently is a national specialty. Sheep dot the hillsides, and is one of the reasons that much of iceland is treeless.

Obligatory flower photos. I'll have to make an attempt to ID them once I get a field guide.

After breakfast, I got back on the road, heading north, where I planned to meet up with a fellow who runs Greenlandic (inuit) dogs on the glacier. I'm not sure how long the drive would be, going straight through, but the spectacular scenery forced me to stop again and again.

Heading towards the mountains, gaining in elevation, the vegetation becomes more sparse.

Driving towards the Langjokull glacier, where Siggi and Klara run their dogsledding business, dogsledding.is

Ed, does this remind you of anything????

The road gets rougher and the landcape more desolate. It seems as though the last eruption was not so long ago ... There is only volcanic rock, no vegetation at all.

Pay no attention to the signs ...

Finally, I arrive at the end of the road and meet up with Siggi and four nice young men who are his dog handlers for the summer. The dogs are staked out on the glacier.

They very graciously allowed me to help hook up the teams and run the dogs for a group of tourists who came for rides. The dogs impressed me with their work ethic and strength. They clearly earned their dinner tonight; each team of five to six dogs pulled four or five people, on an uphill slope on soft snow. Good dogs!

I had a fabulous day up on the glacier ... And the weather could not have better for our run, especially considering that just before the tourists arrived, it had been sleeting sideways with a brutal wind.

I drove back down the mountain to the small village of Húsafell, where I went for a midnight stroll, cooked myself some yummy pasta with dehydrated veggies and then spent the night in a quaint little hut (emphasis on the word "little") surrounded by spectacular views.

In the morning, I made sure to give myself enough time to swim in the geothermally heated pool, with four separate pools of varying temperatures