Geology Can Be Amazing

 I few more photos from Iceland today. Today my theme is geology.

Above, this amazing set of waterfalls called Gullfoss. We actually walked down to where all those people are standing, which was a little scary for me since I am not crazy about being close to the edge of heights, especially with powerful waterfalls right next to me, but it was a very different  and interesting view of the falls. I'll show you my water photos some other day.

By the way, I haven't run any of these photos through my photo editing program, so if the color looks a bit dull, that is just the digital camera effect which makes everything a little bit grey.

 Boiling mud pots and in the same area

 steaming vents. Kind of a strange thing to see steam coming out of the ground.

 More boiling mud.

 I can't remember what volcano this is. I want to say Mt Hekla, but I  think I am wrong. I need to dig out my map I guess. It might also be Snaefellsjokull. I was having a lot of problems with some of those Icelandic names.  I love the cloud hanging along the top though. 

 And here's this awesome glacier. You could drive off road to the base (well on this rough gravel road) and actually get right next to the glacier. It was very cool to do, and in fact, I think the highlight of my trip. I have some great photos but I will show those another day too.

 And this is the Blue Lagoon, a thermal pool. It is pretty famous, and we went our first day there. All the mineral water comes out of a geothermal heating plant. And the water is really that cool blue color and looks like tinted milk. I must say I enjoyed lounging in the water for a bit.

 Another heated pool letting off all this steam. Don't touch the water or get to close, otherwise you will be burned.

 The tide was out but these are some of the fantastic sea stacks we saw. This particular cluster was north of Reykjavik on the peninsula at a national park (Snaefellsjokull). 

 Not all beaches we stopped at (to walk- way too cold or to rough to go beaching) were black lava sand, but one near Vik was. It made an amazing background for photos.

 Below this is the bridge between continents. The people in the foreground are standing on the North American plate, and the ridge in the background is the Eurasian plate. The gravelly sand in the middle is where the 2 tectonic plates are pulling apart. Iceland is one place in the world where the land is actually getting bigger. Not by much, a couple of centimeters a year.

 Water at the edge of a geothermal pool/geyser. I love the color on the bottom.

 And more steaming vents. I am actually surprised there aren't more of these around the island. These vents were at Geysir.

And here we are, at Geysir.  This one erupts every 5-15 minutes. Which was fun to see, and we saw it quite a few times, even on the road back to our hotel as we passed by later in the day.

So you can see (if you aren't familiar with) that there is pretty cool geology going on in Iceland.  And this is just a taste of what we saw. :)

I'll be back tomorrow with a little art.

Thanks for stopping by to visit.