We drove northward until we hit the Skagafjörður, stopping for coffee in the town of Varmahlið.  We drove through the rain through a beautiful glacial valley exposing a thick sequence of basalts.  One part, to the north, had an unusually jagged skyline, which we determined was probably a rhyolitic tuff ridge.

We pulled in to the mall in Akureyri on the Eyjafjörður.  Lauren, Anat, Aaron, Neal, Tyler, and I went into the very nice supermarket and bought supplies for 4 days.  The hardest thing to find was ice but after three gas stations we finally had success.

Soon outside of Akureyri, Siggi pulled over at a steep canyon called Kotagil and encouraged us to hike up the stream for a couple of  hundred meters, so a bunch of us did.  Garret and Anat found amygduloidal basalts loaded with quartz and zeolites.  Lauren found bright green clay that was probably glauconite.  She also managed to fall into the stream. We concluded that these rocks had spent some time below sea level. 

We continued onward to Goðafoss, the fall of the gods.  We talked about the geology and the distorted columnar jointing.  Lauren noted a distributary channel that headed up the glacial valley before turning northward to form the island on which we were standing. The flow originated in the Odaðhraun and flowed down a river valley for many tens of kilometers. The river was forced to run on top of the flow. The site of the falls is where it cascades off of the lava flow. A short way up the valley to the west the flow dammed one of the tributary streams to form a small lake.

We quickly made it to Reykjahlið and the campground (Hlið).  We put up the two big tents in a staggered set-up with half of one side open on each, putting the openings adjacent to each other to make one very large tent. It was much better than having two separate tents. Cheryl supervised the setting up of my tent having gained experience the night before at Hveravellir.

Elise cooked and I cooked a vegetable stir-fry and some shrimp and beef that people could add to it.  We also cooked a kilo of rice.  It was all gobbled up immediately. I think that it is important that we have good meals on this trip. I hope the other cooks will be creative in their food preparation. It looks as though we will have plenty of money for food.

Throughout our food preparation, the sky was clearing in the west.  We were treated to a nice sunset and a rainbow. It is nice to finally see some clear sky. After dinner I crawled into my sleeping bag and quickly fell asleep.

                       Ecology   Environmental Studies    Mathematics