Iceland: Day 20 - Þingvellir
July 14, 2004
This morning we walked around the church area of Þingvellir and decided to take one of the hiking trails by Þingvallavatn. It was still pretty wet and the trail wound through a "forest" (if you can call waist high bushes a forest!) We came to a picnic area where we found several photographers huddled around a rock mound so we decided to find out what was so interesting. It ended up being a mother ptarmigan with half a dozen tiny chicks all camouflaged so you could barely see them!
After a lunch of cucumber sandwiches and leftover tuna pasta we started hiking across the lavafields of Þingvellir and found a series of caves which was like a mini-rift in the landscape. Telltale signs indicated that sheep sometimes took refuge in these caves as well. The caves weren't marked and we had fun watching people drive by and stop to see what we were looking at, but from the road you couldn't tell that there were caves in the ground so they drove on, and we had the place to ourselves.
For previous pictures of Geysir, see Day 1 and Day 19.
Thingvallakirkja (the church) along the Öxará (the Axe River).
A tern attack.
Hiking along Þingvallavatn.
With so many huge lenses, there must be something to see...
can you spot the camouflaged ptarmigan and its chick?
A little closer, but still hard to spot!
One of the caves hidden in the overgrown 9000 year old lavafield Þingvallahraun.
Rubby squeezes himself through one of the caves.
Rubby finds a snow patch.
Stonecrop growing on the rocks of the cave and mosses and heather plants cover the lavafields.
The sun pops out to highlight the pretty colours of the countryside.
[ Iceland Vacation Home Page ]