We toured Myvatn, circling the lake.  Our first stop was the water right in front of our hotel.  It was full of birds--Arctic terns, all mannor of ducks-- besides our Grebe family.  But the Grebes were right on the edge and so darn cute!.  We fell in love with them and their two babies.  We watched the momma continuing to feed.  We loved watching their little heads pop out with mouths open wide.

We  moved on to the Dimmuborgir's lava formation.  This is unique on land...formed by steam rising through molten lava that created pillars UNDER water.  The water drained leaving intersting formations and a great hiking area.  OK.  That's the official word.  In Icelandic lore, this is a Troll park.  Trolls were having such a good time there, they forgot about the early summer mornings (guess they aren't supposed to be out in daylight). The sun rose and they turned into the rock pillars we saw today.

We took the primitive trail and hiked around, over and through the pillars.

We found another wonderful rock wall as we were leaving--it looked like lace!

We had another great view of the lake as we were leaving.

Moving on, we came to the pseudocraters of  Skutustadagigar- easy for you to say!  This is another special feature of the area created when a lava flow met the wetlands and steam explosions pock-marked the area with the small pseudo-craters.  After all these years, they are now covered  with grass and wild flowers.  Beautiful.

 On the otherA side of the lake we visited Fuglasafn, the large bird sanctuary.  The naturalist helped us positively identify our grebe family at the hotel.  A large colony of  hooper swans were the big draw here.  They were really raising a ruckus.  This is the Eurasian verion of the NA Whoopers.

Tomorrow we leave the northern area of Iceland as we head to Akureyri, the secong largest city in Iceland, on our way to the western fjords.

Alberta