It's not really a long way to Akureyri, but it sounds good, especially when sung to the tune of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary." Yesterday, on our day off, eight of us drove an hour there, in two cars, to hang out in a bookstore and cafe, and have lunch and dinner out. I'm not into hanging out in cafes, so I walked to the nearby botanical gardens and found a bench to write postcards. I enjoyed the gardens quite a bit for their solitude during the wet afternoon.

We had a grey, drizzly morning and afternoon, with some spots of heavy rain, so the drive over and back didn't provide much of a view. Still, getting out of Skagafjord for a day provided a change of scenery. We had a good lunch there, and tried to visit a Viking brewery but found it closed.

Although it's the second largest town in Iceland, Akureyri's smaller than Ithaca. Most of the shops there did not open on Sunday, so we drove back to Saudarkrokur, the town closest to the farm house, for dinner. After that, we drove back to the farm house, and a few of us gathered our gear and took it to the lab house, because five people had to swap accomodations for the upcoming week.

On Friday night one of our vehicles hit a black cow in the road. Luckily they braked soon enough -- and had the SUV -- that only the hood and grill suffered damage. But that incident forced us to have to deal with getting a replacement car while ours undergoes repair, so there was some additional running around to organize that. Apparently the cow took the hit on the rump, fell down, then walked off.