Another bright and sunny day, which led us to do an impulsive thing. More on that later.

We are now on the northern half of Iceland, called the Highland Plateau, and we are beginning our journal westward. Our first stop today was one of the top rated waterfalls in Iceland, called Dettifoss. It is not tall (44 meters), but the volume of water flowing is the largest of all Europe. Surprisingly it is in the middle of nowhere and you would be hard put to guess its existence, until you got close enough to hear it. It is pretty spectacular, especially because there is always a rainbow near it, making for some great photo opportunities. Trivia for the day: Dettifoss was used in the 2012 movie, Prometheus.

Not too far from the falls at Namaskard Pass are an area of boiling mud pools and steam vents. There are warning signs but nowhere near the safety precautions we have in the states. You can actually walk right up to the steam vents and touch them, which I am sure, would lead to extreme burns.

A unique happening while we were viewing the mud pools was the appearance of several long distance runners, including a woman, who were competing in the Fire & Ice Ultra competition which covers 250 km over six days! The race has gotten the reputation of being the toughest race in the world. We talked to a couple of racers as they ran/walked through the mud pool area (it was part of the course).  These people are simply insane to punish their bodies that way.

Now for the impulsive activity for the day. Because the weather was so good we decided to take the one-hour sightseeing plane trip over the area we saw advertised, figuring it would give us a whole new perspective of the area. What we did not realize was that the flight would also show us the awesome destruction that volcanoes bring to an area.

The flight was in a Cessna 206 four seat airplane. The flight path took us over Lake Myvatn, nearby volcano craters, a geothermal power plant in the area the largest (over 5000 square miles) lava field in the world- all at an altitude of about 500 feet. It was quite a thrill and worth the expense. I was awed by the bleakness of the lava field, created by eruptions that began in 1961. Here, 50 plus years later, there is still nothing there except lava- no plants(not even moss), no roads, no trees- nothing but a black surface as far as the eye can see.

The size of the Askja caldera we flew over was also impressive as it covers 50 square kilometers.

Returning to “earth” we ventured to the nearby lava field where we walked a 2 km trail through the field, seeing unique lava formations, some of which have been given names.

Since we were in the area we decided to have an early dinner (we had somehow missed lunch) and chose to go to a very unique restaurant called the “Cow Shed” which was actually part of a working dairy farm. We visited the dairy barn prior to entering the Restuarant. In fact the restaurant  was literally  attached to the milking parlor and while we were eating we watched cows being milked.  Furthermore they brought us small glasses of milk “straight from the source” to taste. Surprisingly it was not as warm as I had feared. This is certainly a different sort of earing experience.

we had planned to try a nearby thermal pool but were too tired after our busy day ( 12,954 steps, 36 floor climbed) so we simply went to our hotel and called it a night.