My hosts in Iceland, Einar, daughters Lora and Brynja, and grandson, Bjartur. In answer to your first question, Iceland has 300,000 people in a land almost the size of New England.
A "crowded" tourist destination near Reykjavik.
Hekla, a frequently destructive volcano. Go read about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hekla . Read also about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki . In the 1780s Laki destroyed 50% of Iceland's livestock and 25% of its people. Have you seen the giant crack in the earth that goes up the center of the Atlantic from Antarctica to the North Pole? Google Earth shows Iceland the only land along this "spreading center". http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=2.460181,-32.519531&spn=123.913515,150.117188&t=h&z=3
Hekla in the distance.
See the walkers behind the falls.
Einar's family's favorite small canyon.
We hiked up to the end where the water fell down vertically in a slot.
Glacier in the background.
The cabin of our second night out.
The water disappears in a hole in the ground near the right side of the picture.
On the right Einar's friend Jon-Orn, a Stanford chemistry PhD now working on geothermal reservoirs.
Where would you like your summer home?
No trees around here (few anywhere in Iceland) so we found this protected spot for our lunch. "Don't leave nut shells on the ground. They will not disappear."
I like this lava flow. Everyone can understand where it came from.
This was 250km from the previous gas station. Einar parks his car so he can squeeze more gas in the tank.
Casual swimming? Look at the clothing of the people on the bank. Look at the flag to see the wind. See any trees as wind breaks? I stayed in this thermal pool for 5 hours. Unexpectedly, when the hot water cooled, it was delicious, no apparent minerals or gasses. Toilets flushed with hot steamy water. That's an experience!
Self-styled gas station.
How deep must the water be before the passengers get wet feet? We crossed (forded) 20-30 rivers and streams most days. To see a few crossings you could see my video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkQuSvoM9wQ Right is Brynja's husband Hinrik.
We take a run up the glacier. It's (partly) on the video (previous caption) too.
Lunch time again. We could eat in the car, but wouldn't we be more comfortable in that hut up there? Yes, we were.
Hey! There's a big hole over here! Probably not a volcano, but a steam explosion.
Miles and miles we drove down this sandy river bottom. Where there was water it was only inches deep.
Einar's jeep boiled over. We had a radio link between the vehicles. There was good cell phone coverage about everywhere. But no help was needed. We had a bunch of plastic bottles of water and soon found more water.
He said he once went swimming here. Today, July 15, it snowed on us as we began our hike to this place.
Another gas station. "Bensin" means gasoline
There are some giant waterfalls not long hikes from here.
It never got dark at night. We often went hiking about 9pm. My camera would have preferred more light to get some color. Theoretically, if this waterfall were converted to electricity and sold in Europe, Iceland could abandon its fishing industry. Joke: "We could turn on the water whenever people wanted to watch it, make electricity other times."
Here we see how waterfalls create the landscape. The mesa on the left was likely a waterfall in the past.
Columnar basalt where the columns are not orthogonal to a simple cooling plane.
Motel. The center building has water. Good toilets, hot showers, etc. The cabins have electric heat and stove and dishes. Bring your own bedding. The background lake was formerly a field, but then the earth moved; its surface bent.
