Archive for August, 2007

Iceland

Sunday, August 26th, 2007

In July my cousin and I took a trip to Norway. On the way we stopped in Iceland for a couple of days. We took a lot of pictures and I thought I’d share some of them with you. Hopefully it will not be too painful. The first two pictures are typical landscapes in Iceland. basically what you are looking at is hardened lava flow. The whole country is output from volcanos.

Iceland land (laval) scape

Iceland Landscape

This next shot is a statue on the harbor in Reykjavik – the capital of Iceland.

Iceland Harbor

As you may know the tectonic plate that Europe sits on and the plate that North America sits on meet at Iceland. The two are pulling apart and that is why there is so much activity (volcanos, earthquakes, etc) there. In the picture below I am standing on a cliff at the end of North America. below is a plane where the Icelandic legislature used to meet. On the far side is Europe. So not only can you see Europe from North America you can drive between the two. I found this to be pretty cool.

Valley between North America and Europe

Speaking of volcanos – this one hasn’t gone off for a while. There is quite some pool of water in the bowl though.

Volcano

Oh yes and there are water falls there. This one (next two pictures) is called Gullfoss or Golden Falls.

Gullfoss

Gullfoss

The term geyser was invented in Iceland. The pool in the back of this picture is called Geysir and is the one all the rest have been named after.

Geysir

One last picture – The steam you see in the distance is all natural.

Steam vents

These steam vents are used to heat the whole city of Reykjavik. Geothermal power is pretty much the whole source of power for the country. Such a deal.

Water Falls

Saturday, August 25th, 2007

So waterfalls are pretty common in Norway. Some of them are pretty high as well. In fact something like 2 or three of the highest waterfalls in the world are in Norway. I don’t think I saw any of those but I saw some pretty cool ones. I posted some pictures on my Spaces Web site.
Kjosfossen
This one falls about 306 feet and you can only see about the top third of it in this picture. Niagra Falls is about 167 feet tall but is of course much wider.
I have a bunch more pictures of water falls I may add. After a while we just stopped taking pictures of them though.