We (or I) awoke early, 5:30am after only 3 hours of sleep. Tried to go back to sleep and did for a bit but the sun was already high in the sky. There were peo­ple rolling into camp­sites until the early hours and kids play­ing out­side into the early morn­ing hours.

I’m beat and poor Greg has to deal with my crank­i­ness in the morn­ing. 4 hours/sleep per night doesn’t make for a nice Jus­tine at least until I’ve got­ten some cof­fee in me. I took a nice hot (sul­fur) shower and we packed up. It was nice to wash some clothes for the next phase. We hit the local bak­ery, got cof­fee and gas and hit the 1 again. This time head­ing north out of Blonduos to the Ska­ga­heidi Penin­sula. We took the Ring Road (1) to the 75 and headed into the inlet. The water is the bright blue you see when the water is super cold and very clean. The scenery was spec­tac­u­lar. Plenty of oppor­tu­nity to take pic­tures and walks. We stopped at Holar, a very old church (1016) site where the bish­ops of the north were head­quar­ters. The church was re-built in the 1980’s and is made of out sand­stone with a set­ting right in the mid­dle of the glac­i­ers up on a hill. There is a school there as well were stu­dents study fish and there is also a geot­her­mal pool under­neath the school. Very pretty and very windy. Along the way more sheep, horses and cows graz­ing on the grassy land.

Our des­ti­na­tion today was Akureyri, the cap­i­tal of north Ice­land and sec­ond largest city in the coun­try (16,700). It is sit­u­ated on a fjord. No ref­er­ence is made of the town until 1562. It was a trad­ing cen­ter for a long time and is now home to two of Iceland’s largest fish­eries oper­ate here. The tourism indus­try is grow­ing and it is the hub for whale watch­ing hik­ing, camp­ing, etc. There are a hand­ful of muse­ums, and artists gal­leries along with the Botan­i­cal Gar­dens which were lovely. We splurged and are stay­ing at a hotel tonight which is expen­sive, but has free wi-fi which makes Greg happy. We walked around a bit and got some din­ner. Greg had whale steak which wasn’t bad. It looks a lot like red meat, has good fla­vor, but is tough. Still you have to try this stuff while here. We ate at a nice place called Bluwinn right in town. It was crowded and had a large salad bar. Yay! Tomor­row we head to Godafoss Falls, 40kms away which are some of the most beau­ti­ful water­falls in Ice­land. Then East. We planned out our next 5 days to try and hit the top spots before head­ing back to Rekyjavik.

I am so happy to be sleep­ing in a bed tonight. I think I may be too old for true camp­ing, but I love this coun­try. If the weather con­tin­ues to be as nice as it’s been we’ll go home with tans! Today was 15 C so warm by any stan­dards. It’s meant to con­tinue. Yippee.