Finished the Ring Road!

Short post, as I have to be up in 5 hours to catch the shuttle to the airport.

I camped last night in Akureyri, and it rained most of the night. I decided to treat myself to brunch in town, and I'm glad I did. Not only was the food good, but the downtown area was nice!. I browsed around for a while before heading out.

Akureyri is also the only town I've seen where the red traffic light is heart shaped, though the speed signs (the ones that tell you how fast you're going) give you a smiley face or a frowny face, depending on your speed at the moment.

From there on, I pushed back to Reykjavik. Maps said it would take 5 hours, and I think I did it in just over 6 hours, but I stopped to take pictures a number of times. The weather changed as frequently as the scenery did, but I did have some clear skies. These pictures were taken from the same location, just facing different directions.

Oh, I found out what the large raptor that I saw on Friday was! A gyrfalcon! That's a new bird for me. It was certainly a large falcon, and my pictures are horrible—in my defense, it was really foggy—but the bird ID group on Facebook identified it in under 2 minutes.

I did move fast today, but I'll have a week to explore the area later this month. Right now, I'm thinking I'll drive back to Mývatn, then meander back west, but I don't need to decide that now. The weather may influence my choices too.

I went through the deepest tunnel today that I've ever seen. I've been through long tunnels before—I went through a really long tunnel in the Pyrenees—but this one was so deep! Ah, I just googled it: the Hvalfjörður Tunnel. It's 3.5 miles (5,770 meters) long and 540 feet below sea level.

I checked into a hotel near the airport, then returned my camper van. It was a nice little vehicle, but I'm going to get a different type when I come back. This one had to be plugged in at each campsite to have heat (and the heat was a tiny space heater) and the entire back was the platform bed. You could store things under the platform, but there was no place to sit except the driver's seat or the folding chairs outside. I'm going up a size, so I'll have a second battery to run the heater and to power a cooler. It will be nice to be able to sit inside the camper.

I'm off to Bergen in the morning. My friend John is going to pick me up at the airport, which is very nice of him! He may regret it when he sees the size of my big suitcase. He asked today if I like cats, and of course, I said I like cats and dogs. His wife Renate has 15 cats (and 1 dog), but some of those are 2 week old kittens. I don't remember what type of cats they are. I know she specializes in a particular cat breed. I'll know soon!