Relative Something

We are home from our great adventure of 10 days exploring portions of Iceland with our great friends, Mike and Barb Wilkus. Iceland is a very special place on this planet, and we are grateful that we were able to experience it in surprisingly nice weather and successfully achieve everything we planned without a glitch.

I found more trees than I expected!

But there was plenty of landscape without.

We hiked to a lot of waterfalls.

We saw a fascinating amount of varying geology that provided dramatically more vivid evidence of the earth’s history than where we live in Wisconsin.

We soaked in a number of geothermally heated pools and hot tubs, of which there are few photos out of respect for other bathers’ privacy and desires to avoid getting our cameras wet. We were able to experience the awesome spectacle of a glacier in real life, even as it was melting away beneath our feet. And finally, the good weather provided multiple nights of viewing the Aurora Borealis displays, which was a primary objective for Cyndie.

That was a special bonus.

There are many more photos (taken by all 4 of us) and stories that I hope to present soon. The planning for this trip began almost two years ago and included consultations with a travel agent and advice from one of my Brainstorms internet community members with first-hand knowledge. (Many thanks, JH!)

I cannot take any credit for preparations as ALL of the work was done by the other three. They collaborated to arrange our flights, rent a vehicle, plot a route, book rooms in different hotels and an Airbnb on a farm, and even make reservations for meals at some restaurants. They even packed necessary bags to facilitate grocery shopping so we could make our own meals at times and picnic in the car for lunch on a few different days.

Despite my distaste for traveling, particularly by airplane, the fact that Barb and Mike are such wonderful friends and Iceland is a place of such spectacular things to see and experience made it easy for me to truly enjoy this adventure.

There were only a few instances where I was reminded of the famous photo of many teams of mountain climbers waiting in a queue on the approach to the summit of Mount Everest. It was a rare instance when we were able to experience uncluttered views of waterfalls, volcano craters, geysers, or beaches. Early morning proved to be the secret to being the first car in the parking areas.

We didn’t have to deal with much in the way of precipitation in our locations, but high winds were a common occurrence. It made cool days into bitterly cold ones, threatened to hyper-extend door hinges in a moment of inattention, and even challenged our abilities to remain standing a few times. Made it feel like we were on an adventure, it did.

That was a fabulous trip, and I am lucky to have been included. I plan to write more about our experiences in the days ahead.

Thanks for returning to read after so many repeated days of tree trunks. I hugged our mother tree on our walk with Asher yesterday morning.

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