The Freshest Fruit You'll Find in Iceland

Leaves are already starting to yellow here, although the temperatures have been warm by Icelandic standards - except that we've had an incredibly strong wind of 20 m/s (40 mph).  More importantly, the unassuming little plant I've been identifying as "vaccinium" all summer turned out to be a blueberry bush!  We went out on Kalfastrond to see what we could find and ended up with a lot of blueberries!

Half of our haul!

So far with only been eating them on cereal, in skyr, or just straight, but there are plans for blueberry pancakes in the future.

Here's a picture of the lake right outside our house - Kalfastrond is the most sheltered part of the lake and is usually relatively calm even when it's not safe to go out on the rest of the lake.  Not so much today, though.

White caps = bad

And here's a panorma shot from Nammifjall, the mud pots I visited a few days ago:

Click for a larger image!

One last blog tonight, I promise!

My apologies for the severe lack of blogs followed by four in one night - I forgot one more little adventure to tell you about!  We've already got blog-worthy plans for the next two nights, so I wanted to get these posted before I became swamped in pictures and stories.

We were driving between field sites on the Ring Road, Iceland's major highway, when we saw this:

First off, that's what happens to your windshield after driving in midge columns.  More importantly, that's a horse walking down the Ring Road, with three accomplices grazing in the ditch.  These were escaped horses from one of the neighboring farms, and they looked like they were having a grand old time sampling this ungrazed space and occasionally sauntering up to see what's happening on the road.  We stopped in at Daddi's Pizza and told them about the horses.  Since everybody in Iceland knows everybody else, the woman working at Daddi's simply called the farmer and let him know about the horses.  Crisis averted!

Farewell to Husavik

After a rather interesting charter fishing trip taken by some members of our group led to complementary dinners at a swanky restaurant in Husavik, we decided to take one last trip up to Husavik before the end of the summer.  Husavik will always hold a place in my heart as the closest outpost of civilization and the place we'd usually go to do touristy things and eat at restaurants.  Because we didn't all get free meals at the fancy restaurant, a few of us went to a different seafood restaurant we had coupons for.  I'm not usually a big fan of fish but the cod shish-kebab I had was pretty good!  We also hit up the souvenir shops.  I think I found everything I needed for a special someone back home, but I'm not telling what I got!

We also decided to check out a thermal pool just outside of Husavik.  It was possibly my favorite swimming spot in Iceland!  It's a man-made dam in a hot stream which resulted in a good-sized, bathtub temperature lake.  We could tell it was artificial because of the sandy bottom, strategically placed plants to prevent erosion, and some goldfish I spotted swimming in the lake!

The steaming stream

In and Around Kalfastrond

Our big project yesterday was taking down the midge exclusion cages at Kalfastrond.  Although we always take them down for the winter (our poor mesh contraptions could never survive an Icelandic winter!), the cages will be moved to a new site next year.  The problem is that this site is rather wetter than the rest of Myvatn and not very representative of the area.  Compound that with goose grazing problems, horse pooping problems, and what appears to be sheep-gnawing-on-the-cages problems, it seemed like a good idea to move the midge exclusion experiment to a dryer, fenced area.

 It's also haying time at Kalfastrond! It reminds me of the Midwest a lot.  It's even starting to feel like fall here, and there seems to be something close to true darkness around midnight now!  I'm hoping I can spot some Northern Lights.

Krafla

In our last week, we've been making quite the effort to see the sights around Myvatn we've missed before it's time to leave!  The biggest miss of all of these was Krafla, a caldera visible from our house that is rather active and last erupted in 1984 (and rumour has it that it's overdue for another one!)  Krafla isn't like a traditional cone shaped volcano - think more like Yellowstone, but with the potential to crack and ooze lava on occasion.  And like Yellowstone, it has mudpots!

Driving past (and underneath) the geothermal power plant, we next arrived at the site of the most recent Krafla eruptions.  This lava flow was created in the 70's and 80's.  Before that, the most recent eruption had been the Myvatn Fires in the 1720's, when lava could be seen spewing from the Myvatn area from a distance, and a lava flow destroyed three farms while miraculously missing the church.

There was steam coming from cracks all over the lava field!

Paths of the most recent flows

Sunset over Krafla (around 10:30PM!)

For more reading:

I'm guest writing on the lab blog Smidge of Midge about all of the counting we've been doing!  If you want to check it out, the link is: http://uwmyvatn.blogspot.com/2012/08/one-mite-two-mite-three-mite-four.html
There's all sorts of great posts about our work there as well!

And for a different perspective on the summer (as well as some awkward photos of me dancing), check out my roomie Elsemarie's blog at http://onthetopofthemidgeworld.wordpress.com/# !

The Last Push

I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but it is suddenly August!  That also means I have only 12 days for research, then my family is joining me to tour around Iceland for 10 days, then back to Madison!  As fun as this summer has been, I'm really excited to be a tourist and to get back to Madison.

Half the group is leaving around the same time I am, so there is a big push to get everything done in the next week and a half.  That means final rounds of routine sampling, taking down experiments, setting up new ones for next year, and of course finishing up all of the counting that still needs to be done.  Yesterday, we went on what we thought was going to be the last transect collecting run, but there were so many midges out that we decided to leave them up for another week - there's a second, smaller midge emergence in late summer, just in time for my family to arrive! (Sorry guys).

Bug collecting station!

We get to see a lot of beautiful places while collecting transects

Midge column!

We also went to Akureyri to run some errands.  We didn't have time for any sight-seeing, but we did stop for hot dogs at the most scenic gas station I've ever been at.

European Fanta is better than American Fanta

French fry thief

I don't think I've waxed poetic on Icelandic hot dogs yet.  Hot dogs are pretty much Iceland's unofficial national food and can be bought freshly grilled from most gas stations.  They are made primarily of lamb, which makes them taste better than American hot dogs, in my opinion, and the toppings are ketchup, a mustard/mayo mix, fresh onions, and fried onions.  In Northern Iceland, the toppings go underneath the hot dog; in Southern Iceland, they go on the top like we usually do hot dogs in the States.  They are delicious and are a great, cheap dinner on the go!