A tailwind is a terrible thing to waste [Skaftafell > Vik -- 86mi ]

The Svenafell campground where I stayed last night was just a few miles from the Skaftafellsjokull glacier, a popular tourist destination with a nice Visitors Center and some scenic hiking to be had. It was busy by Icelandic standards but worth the stop. There was a lot of interesting info on display at the Visitors Center about the geology and history of the region, and I'm always a sucker for those kinds of things.

First I took the short, paved path up to the edge of the glacier. I'd hoped to be able to actually walk upon it, but a pesky fast flowing (and very cold!) river cut off access onto the ice. [Back in Denver, my old buddy Robbie gave me a couple of the amazing chocolate bars that he makes at Ritual Chocolate... on the condition that I snap a few photos of his culinary work in Iceland- and then enjoy them! BTW, this is seriously the best chocolate ever!! They spend several weeks hand making it with vintage machinery from the 1920's, then age it in blocks for many months before finally creating a finished product. If you see a Ritual Chocolate bar for sale, seriously, splurge on it and you will not be disappointed!]

Ritual Chocolate and the Skaftafellsjokull

I then hiked up the ridge overlooking the glacier:

Skaftafelssjokull

On the way back down, low and behold I got to walk amongst some trees for the first time on this island!

After eating my lunch at the Visitors Center, I pushed off around 6:15PM to make some more headway this evening. Not everything in Iceland is picture-perfect postcard scenery:

Skeidararsandur

This is a vast, perfectly flat ~20mi stretch of black sand/gravel which is considered a glacial floodplain. The glacial floods are an interesting phenomena: there are actually lakes submerged beneath/within the large glaciers, and the underground volcanic activity gradually melts some of the glacier from the inside. As ice floats on water, eventually the water levels rise high enough that the glacier is lifted up enough to release excess water from within. Some places this occurs annually, others it is only a rare happening. And of course when a volcano actually erupts, it melts the glacial ice very rapidly and serious flooding follows. So these vast flat floodplains are a result of this process over tens of thousands of years.

I passed through several miles of a cool lava field covered in white pillowy moss- it looked like it had rained marshmallow fluff:

Brunahraun

I got a little town with a big name, Kirkjubaejarklaustur (typically abbreviated to Klaustur) and figured I'd set up camp somewhere comfy nearby. But just outside town I discovered I had a really nice tailwind, and if I've learned one thing about cycling here it is you never waste a good opportunity to make friendly with the wind. So I pressed on for another hour, then another-nuther hour, eventually 35mi beyond the town and only 9mi before the next town of Vik. It's not everywhere you can set off at a normal person's dinnertime and burn down 80+mi before going to bed!