Traveling Applejax

Yesterday was glorious. Sure, the morning started out gloomy and rainy as usual when we headed south from Svinafell. As soon as we turned a corner and started heading northeast, though, the weather turned too. Suddenly we had blue skies, full sun, and a strong tail wind! I have never been so happy to see the sun. It wasn’t super warm, but I did strip down to only two layers on top (with three on the bottom still) for a little while. Of course, as soon as we stopped I had to layer up because of the wind.

We covered miles and miles effortlessly for quite some time. When Mike stopped to strip off a layer, I stayed on my bike but stopped pedaling. The winds were strong enough to push me along at 7-9 mph. It was fabulous.

My mood soured a bit when we turned onto a rather rough gravel road to see “Iceberg Lagoon,” but it turned out that the sights were well worth my discomfort on the bumpy ride in. We were right on the edge of a lake full of giant icebergs with a glacier calving in the background. It was amazing. My favorite part was just listening to the ice because I could hear it crackling in the sun. At one point we heard a giant chunk of the glacier calve off in a minute-long series of thunderous roars. Another minute later, all of the icebergs in the lagoon started bobbing and the waves from the calving lapped the shore.

After a while we moved on and caught our tail wind toward the more popular iceberg lake farther on. While the first one was much closer to the glacier, the second was far larger. The first had ashy gray-brown water; the second, brilliant blue. We spent a while drinking the hot chocolate from a nearby cafe and ogling the icebergs. We saw a few big ones break up and float out to sea. It was spectacular.

We took advantage of the tail winds and the nice weather and traveled about 100 km for the day. We didn’t stop biking until just after midnight. Of course, we were greeted with another wet, chilly day today. Those of you suffering heat waves should send sunny thoughts this way!

A wreck just off the ring road closed traffic in both directions for about 15 minutes as a crane hauled the van onto a flatbed truck.