Iceland. . .so much more than just ice!

Iceland was a country that really was never at the top of my list as places I wanted to travel. . .but having spent 4 days there, I am ready to go back. It is a country of about 300,000 people with a land mass the size of Ohio. The people are very friendly and helpful and most speak very good English, in addition to their native Icelandic tongue. We flew from Frankfurt after a great bike trip into Reykjavik, the capital. We landed in driving rain and thought we were doomed with bad weather for our stay. But as you can see from the photos, the weather cleared.
The pictures show some Icelandic ponies, which were first brought over by the Vikings in 870 A.D. They are all over the place and are used for sheep herding. The next picture was taken at a sheep roundup that we went to. The sheep are sheered in the spring (yes, this one has already been sheered - they just keep their coats long) and then let out to pasture to graze for the summer, then are rounded up for the fall to either be sold or bred.
The third picture shows the topography of this very volcanic country. . .not a lot of trees and in some respects reminds me of certain parts of Alaska. The buildings in the picture are at Thingvallir National Park, where the first Icelandic parliament was set up well over a 1000 years ago. Iceland became an independent country in 1944.
The fourth picture is Gulfoss, meaning Golden Falls. They were pretty impressive on the Hvitna River. About 11% of the land mass is covered with glaciers so there is always quite a bit of runoff water (and incidentally the best drinking water I have ever had). The final picture is of Helen and biking companions, Patsy and Joanne, at the legendary Blue Lagoon. We had a lot of fun there swimming in this geyser filled pool. The pool is thermally heated, a couple of acres in size and is in the middle of a lava field. The water is blue due to a certain algae in the water. We all had mud baths there with the white silica mud, which supposedly makes a person look younger. . .don't know whether I would go that far.
The one down side to this country is the high cost of everything. A gallon of gas costs $7.68 and a two-piece dinner meal at KFC was $11. Despite the expense, it is a great country to visit where we could all learn much from them about energy with their extensive use of geo-thermal energy.