A lighthouse loop

I arrived in Reykjavik around 7:30 and as my room wasn’t quite ready, I dropped off my bags and set out to explore the town.  In my typical style, I had a few sights in my head to walk by, but prefer to just organically explore and see where my instincts and the fates may blow me.

Reykjavik is not huge, but it is by far the largest city in the country and over a thousand years old to boot, so it has quite a developed central core.  Being Sunday morning and rather early, unfortunately most of the attractions and shops were closed, but I did get to explore and come up with a wish list for visiting next trip.  Among them the Icelandic Punk Museum, which was most appropriately located in a now closed underground public toilet — I’ve got to make it back to see this some day.  I also spied a bevy of other interesting museums including the Saga Museum, which with my love of Norse Mythos is also a must-visit some day, and the Penis Museum.  Ah yes, the Penis Museum, clearly denoted as being tastefully done, not sure how close that one is to the top of my to-visit list, but knowing its there is well . . . something.  I also spied the Maritime Museum with a very interesting brewery right next to it, opens in three hours good to know . . .

At this point I was on the city’s waterfront and could spy off in the distance a lighthouse that I knew was the Grotta Island Lighthouse from my pre-trip research.  The weather was pleasant (50’s and clear) and since everything else was closed I figured it was time for a nice hike.  The lighthouse is actually about 5km away, well outside of the city proper at the end of a peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic.  The temperatures were nice I strolled along the waterfront all the way there along a dual use cycling/walking trail and enjoyed scenic overlooks with benches carved out of logs and bird sightings along the way.  The lighthouse is actually on a small island connected to the end of the peninsula by a small bridge and the whole area is a wildlife reserve.  Unfortunately the island was as closed to foot traffic due to bird nestlings at this time of year, but I still got some great views of the lighthouse and noticed that the trail continued around the peninsula past the lighthouse, and I decided to just keep following it.  The walk was beautiful and quiet and I really enjoyed getting out to see some of natural Iceland.  When I decided to make this one day excursion to scout out Iceland, I was bothered my the fact I was going to be stuck in town and not get to explore the natural wonder that is really a highlight of the country . . . So this excursion was well worthwhile.  The far side of the peninsula houses a golf course with amazing views.  

I stuck to the trail around the outskirts of the golf course.  A little less quiet as I had to keep waiting for golfers and keep a keen eye on their lack of accurate shots.  I watched a few bounce near me and was only surprised once when I heard a ball bounce on the trail behind me.  Having survived Iceland’s best golfers, I made my way back off the peninsula and into town « coincidentally » walking by the Brewery a few minutes after they opened, and felt obliged to test their beer and food.  Fresh Atlantic Cod and Sweet Potato Chips go well with an Icelandic Porter on the back deck of the Maritime Museum on a beautiful day.  Maybe too beautiful, even with a hat on I may have gotten a little red, pretty noteworthy at this latitude.  

Exercised, fed, and watered, I made my way back to the hotel checked in, took a well-needed shower, and settled in to watch the US vs Chile game on TV . . . gotta love that Icelandic Football commentary.  Go USA!

Iceland Punk Museum

View across Faxa Bay

Grotte Island Lighthouse

Setting out on a very long day

A sleepless night on the plane ended as Keflavik, Iceland came into view and my plane landed.  I boarded a bus for Reykjavik about 30 miles away to start my day for exploration.  It is the most northerly capital city in the world at 64N only a couple of degrees below the Arctic Circle.  As such, the week before the beginning of summer feature days with just over 21 hours of sunlight.  My typical Eurotrip strategy is to plow through the first day to get on the right sleep schedule . . . So I set out to see how many of those daylight hours I could enjoy.

The drive to Reykjavik is an interesting one.  To one side you have the Atlantic Ocean, to the other you have vast fields of former lava flows.  To the ocean side of the road were these beautiful fields of blue Alaska Lupines, while the other direction you see volcanic rocks often encrusted with thick lichens and moss.  Both beautiful views, but so different.  My first impression was that if Hawaii had been plunked down right next to Scotland . . . this is what it would look like.  In the distance I could see plumes of steam coming from the base of a mountain, these hydrothermal features are so constant that a power plant has been built nearby harvesting their geothermal power.  Interestingly these hydrothermal waters are also circulated through the Blue Lagoons resort are where people go to soak in the waters.  Geothermal water is even circulated under some roads and sidewalks in Reykjavik to keep them ice-free in winter.

Alaska Lupine.  This beautiful plant covers the roadside and plains to the Oceanside of the road. Apparently it is an invasive species that has taken off and wreaked havoc, although it was also very good at its intended purpose, which was to enrich poor soil in low lying areas allowing them to be later farmed.

Pictures from the bus did not work well, but this image shows the hydrothermal clouds rising near the power plant and Blue Lagoon. 

A new adventure

Its been a while since I have reported any of my travels here.  It seemed like time.  

A few hours ago I departed for a new adventure where I’ll spend a very long day exploring a new country, then head off to an old favorite to meet up with some dear friends and enjoy some world class soccer.

I just watched the sunrise over Greenland.  A fitting place to start my trip.  While the majority of Greenland is nothing, but I ice, the coasts are beautiful and quite different.  

The western coast is rocky and ice-free.  You can see the obvious scars the ice has left in the form of nearly straight fiords and valleys, and thousands of islands.  A few miles inland ice begins, at first it is quite rugged looking, but quickly smooths out into a featureless plain.  Eventually mountains start to peak through the ice sheet as you near the coast.  In places you can see cobalt blue Melt ponds, where water is melting on top of the ice.  The east coast is quickly upon you.  This is where the ice meets the sea and Greenland glaciers give birth to north Atlantic icebergs.  

Next stop Reykjavík!

Sunrise over Greenland’s west coast

A melt pond. 

Ivebergs born on the east coast.

It's the future!

October 21, 2015.  A time of hoverboards and self-lacing Nikes...A fax machine in every room and don't forget your auto-drying jacket.

Not traveling today, but it seemed vagabonds compass-worthy that Newark decided to have a Back to the Future day event... So after work I headed downtown and checked out the Delorean in front of the comic book store. I just missed themed sandwiches from a local food truck.  Other festivities included a fund raiser to save the clock tower (not so much a tower, as a clock on a post...but money is going to charity anyway) and BTTF board games at the local gamers hangout. 

Getting a chance to geek out on memories of my youth, priceless.

Papal intervention

Despite some weather in the area, we made great time and arrived in Philadelphia early, only to be immediately told by ground control to park beside the runway.  Today was the Pope's visit to Philly and we knew that he was scheduled to leave slightly before we arrived, but between our early arrival and some delays on the Papal side, he was still on the ground and this meant all planes were ordered to stop where they were.  By luck we were stopped adjacent to the Pope's plane and my window had a perfect view of the American Airlines jet the Pope had chartered as his motorcade drove up.  I watched them load (too far away to actually see the Pope), taxi away, and take off on one of the far runways.  Yet, we still sat there.  Apparently the Vice President was also at the airport having met with the Pope, and we were now waiting for Air Force Two to take off, which it eventually did in spectacular fashion on the runway only a short distance outside my window, in fact our plane shook slightly as it whizzed by.  Now we are rolling again . . . an unexpected ending to our trip.

Over the bubbles and through the woods

Our kayaking friends finally reach
the far shore of Jordan Pond.

One last chance to hike Acadia.  Our flight leaves from Bangor at 6pm, so we check out, store our bags, and jump on a park bus once more.  We head to Jordan Pond.  Not to have pop-overs, which sadly I will miss out on this trip, but to hike around the pond and over the Bubble Mountains beyond.  We set out on the pond trail and are surprised that it is almost entirely planks.  Not smooth boardwalk that would be handicap accessible, but two plank wide balance beams almost all the way.  The ground is not that rough, so I can only assume this is to prevent erosion.  For most of the hike we see noone save two kayakers who are fighting the wind and quite a few white caps in the pond next to us.  In fact, they may be losing the battle as we manage to keep up and eventually pass them as we walk . . .  It makes us grateful that we didn't go with "Plan A" today, which was in fact to rent sea kayaks.  We meet more hikers as we reach the far side of the pond, but quickly duck onto the side trail over the bubbles, two bulbous mountains that stand watch over Jordan Pond.  One of the Bubbles is home to the famous Bubble Rock, a perched boulder that has looked primed to fall over the edge for centuries.  The trail we are on goes up a saddle between the two and we also do the side trails to summits of both North and South Bubble before heading down the other side to Eagle Lake, and onto a carriage path that ends our journey at Bubble Lake just missing the bus by a 30 seconds.  So we got an extended rest as we waited 40 minutes for the next bus.  We roll back into town, catch up with Kat and Kathy (our friends from the Schooner picture) eat lunch at the Side Street Cafe for what TripAdvisor rates as Bar Harbor's second best lobster roll (#1 was closed today).  They were excellent and I doubt #1 could have been any better.  Out of time, we catch a ride to Bangor for our flight home.

On top of one of the Bubbles . . .
probably South Bubble.

Bubble Rock.

And we're climbing the staircase to . . .

With a handful of daylight hours to spare after the cruise, Bruce and I set out for a nearby hike.  We caught the Bus to Sieur de Mont and headed up Dorr Mountain.  The trail is almost straight up with a staircase carved directly out of the mountain's granite bedrock acting as the trail for most of the >1000 ft ascent (my fitbit registered over 100 flights of stairs during the ascent).  We reached the top where we got great views of the Bay (including the next cruise on the schooner) and of nearby Cadillac Mountain.  At this point it was nearing dark, so we weighed the several options: head down and back up a saddle to Cadillac Mountain where we'd have to hitch a ride (no buses up there), or three other trails that could return us to Sieur de Mont.  We opted for the North Ridge trail which ended up being a 30+ degreee decent through a boulder field, which very quickly left the ridge top onto the east side of the mountain where the sun had already set.  We somehow managed to avoid limb breakage in our dark stumble down and made our way back to the bus stop just as darkness fell at the base.  We took a brief tour of the gardens where I once again viewed the "bird home" that we first discovered back in 2004, and then waited in pitch darkness and building cold until the last bus arrived to take us back to town.

View from Dorr Mountain, including our schooner on its next cruise.