Iceland, Day 4

(Anthony wrote this one)

We went out again last night searching for the elusive northern lights. It was extremely windy when we headed out about 9:30 p.m., and we planned on staying out until about midnight. We could see stars above when we left our Airbnb, so we had some hope of seeing them even though the Soft Serve News website indicated the Aurora Borealis was quiet. We found a somewhat dark parking spot with a water view. The almost full moon lit things up quite a bit, and that is also not good for Borealis watching. At about 11:15 p.m., we noticed a very pale green line in the sky. We wondered, could that be it, but we were skeptical thinking it could be the moon reflecting light off a cloud.  We kept a close eye on the newly found light, and it would get longer, grow brighter in certain areas, disappear in areas, and then come back. We continued watching this interesting phonomena in the sky, and at one point it split into 2 distinct lines in part of it, and dropped down in places.  This activity went on until about 12:10 p.m., when it completely disappeared. We waited 5 more minutes with no activity at all, so we called it a night. We are both convinced that what we saw was the Aurora Borealis, so that can checked off our bucket list. 

This morning, we were both still asleep at 8:15 a.m., when one of the other guests in the Airbnb got in the shower and woke us up. Thank goodness she did because there is no telling how long we would have slept. As we were getting ready to prepare breakfast, 3 young Asian folks entered the Airbnb with their luggage, went into a bedroom and shut the door. We did not see them again. Our Airbnb host told us that the folks that came in this morning got lost last night, and was just checking in this morning. What a terrible way to start a vacation, especially in an area where you only have about 4.5 hours of daylight. 

We left Olafsvik headed for Reykjavik, Iceland's capital.  Below are some pics of the beautiful scenery we drove through today. 

Made a quick stop at Bjarnarfoss. 

At Bjarnarfoss, we saw our first real trees since arriving at Iceland.

Speaking of firsts since we've been in Iceland, today was the first time we have seen the sun in Iceland. The pic below was taken about 11:30 a.m., and the sun was just coming up. 

Even more trees, pic below. 

Snow covered mountains below. 

Instead go going through the tunnel going to Reykjavik, we bypassed the under water tunnel and took the road around Hvalfjordur fjord, which was very scenic.  Below are some pics from this loop. 

We finally made it to Reykavik, and it was about rush hour so there was a lot of traffic. Lisa's job as navigator was to get me to the Airbnb. On the instructions to get to the Airbnb, it said to not go completely by your GPS, it will take you to the wrong place. So to make her job easier, she not only plugged the address into a Garmin GPS, she decided to use the navigation on the the car's GPS, AND also her cell phone map.  THREE different navi systems were talking at the same time. I think her intent was to be taken out of the picture completely. Well, at about the 2nd turn, all three devices were giving me different directions. I asked Lisa what I needed to do, and being the good navigator she is, she told me to do what I wanted to. I had no idea what to do with that advice, so we had to pull over and shut off all but one the devices. We eventually found our Airbnb.