Day four was a very full day and wouldn't all fit in one post. It's hard to imagine all of the things we got done in 8-9 hours but we were on a mission to get it all done in one day.
As you know we went geocaching whenever we could during our trip to Iceland. One of the caches we had to find was at the Sólheimasandur plane wreckage site. If you don't know about it or how to get to it you would never come across it.
We exited the main road onto a short dirt road that pretty much looked like you were driving onto someones farm land. The landscape quickly changed and became more of a moonscape. All you could see around you was black lava rocks.
We drove for a good 10-15 minutes just following the GPS navigation and the tire tracks of those who had visited before us. We had to dodge the larger rocks like we were driving through a field of land mines.
The
story of the plane...in November 1973 a United States Navy airplane was
forced to land on Sólheimasandur's black sand beach because it ran out
of gas. The crew got out just fine and they just walked away from the
plane and left it. No one bothered to move it and now it's this odd, yet
cool photo prop of sorts.
I played around with photo editing on Google Creative and made a few changes to some of the pictures.
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You can see the ocean from the plane.
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When
we made it to the wreckage I frantically ran around trying to get the
best pictures I could before the sun went down. Total panic mode. Once I
got home I thought of a million different shots of the plane I could
have taken had I slowed down a minute. Don't worry, I will be back and
get the shots I should have taken in the first place. But the shots I
did get aren't too shabby.
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From the passenger cabin facing the cockpit.
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Facing the rear of the plane.
We found the cache at the rear of the plane. It was just a small film canister with a log to sign.
The cockpit. I could only climb so far in to take the pic.
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I was trying to get a shot of us together with the plane but I only had 3 seconds to get from camera to next to Aaron. All of the pics ended up blurry so I can't use them but I wanted to post this one because I thought it was cute. I was running at him and started sliding past him and he had to catch me.
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After leaving the plane wreck we made our way to the Dyrholaey Cliffs. One side of the main road is the ocean with the cliffs. The other side of the road is the Mýrdalsjökul glacier and the Katla volcano! Iceland is so amazing!
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This is the southernmost point of Iceland and
that there’s nothing between it and Antarctica.You could literally swim
or sail down there, to the other side of the planet without
encountering anything on the way. Keep in mind it is thousands and thousands of miles away!
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The little town of Vik. I wanted to get a shot of the little church overlooking the town before backtracking and driving out to the beach.
This is a different little church. Just about everywhere you go you are going to see a cute little country church.
Reynisfjara Beach. Like nothing we've ever seen before. Out in the sea are incredible basalt rock formations, Reynisdrangar, and
by the beach are amazing pyramid-like basalt columns and caves.The basalt pyramid is called Gardar, which is the name of the first Scandinavian to live in Iceland, albeit was only one winter.
The view of Dyrholaey Cliffs from Reynisfjara Beach.
The ocean came in a little faster than Aaron thought it would. I ran. He didn't.
It was perfect sitting on the columns and watching the sun go down while the waves kept coming in.
On our way to Vik from the beach we saw the Northern Lights. I wish I had a better shot but this was all I got.
Vik is a small town that shuts down early so we stopped at the only open place there was to eat. A gas station/restaurant.
Our meal was a simple cheeseburger and fries for 390 ISK, about $12. That was no $12 cheeseburger my friend! My obsession while there...Applelsin orange soda. I don't drink soda at home so i enjoyed it while on vacation.
I thought it was funny that one of the newspaper lines was "The Nazis thought Icelanders were lame".
Back to Reykjavik in pitch black darkness.
This was my favorite day ever. Like ever. We had so much fun, laughter, excitement, danger and awe over the natural beauty of this wonderful country. It was a perfect day. I loved it.
