Waking up to fog and mist, we realized that we'd probably have to drive in it all day. We were correct. Navigating back to Egilsstadir turned out much better in the daylight, but still took a little while. Our guidebook suggested that we would find the coastline road longer but better paved than the Ring Road for today, so we decided to drive along the ocean. It turned out that a good percentage of the long road also had no pavement, which led us to wonder whether we would have survived the Ring Road from Egilsstadir south.

Driving back and forth, up one coast of the fjord and down another gave us myopic views of small fishing towns and fogged-in islands and sheer mountainsides and hundreds of pencil-thin waterfalls and glowing green mosses on grey stones and burbling brooks and patches of snow and soggy sheep and craggy skylines crossed by crying seabirds and damp curling tendrils of fog and occasional large trucks that took up more than their side of the road and placid waters gently lapping black sand beaches and mountain screes that seemed to defy gravity.

Eventually, by midafternoon, we reached a small place called Teigarhorn where we stopped to visit a small private museum of zeolites (various mineral formations that can be found locally). It being the end of tourist season, we had the place to ourselves and bought a couple of specimens for our collection. The proprieter of the museum has been collecting them for about eight years and charges no admission fee for his place, which he said was just his hobby. But it was the middle of a working day and he came down to admit us to the museum when we got there in the rain, so I don't know what he does for a living, but apparently it gives him the freedom to open the place at a moment's notice when people come by to see it.

We continued on to Hofn, intending to take a room in the hostel there and to take a boat cruise to a nearby glacier that evening or the next day. We arrived at Hofn about 4:00 pm only to find the hostel didn't open until 5:30, so we went over to the visitor center and spent time at their glacier exhibition, and found out they no longer ran boat cruises there, although down the coast about 70 km we could do that. By then the weather had mostly cleared to just overcast, and the hostel opened.

The hostel had no room for us, but suggested a nearby "guesthouse" that had sleeping bag accomodations. This place appeared to be a very run down hotel, but the inside turned out to be quite nice, and with the price being the same as a hostel (but giving us a private bath), it was quite a deal at $36 for both of us. (Perhaps the place looked run-down because they were preparing to paint.)

Really wanting to see a glacier up close, I drove us out to the nearest one we could see. Distances in Iceland can be quite deceiving because the air is so clear. Uh oh, you say, right? Yeah... We drove about 15 km toward the glacier, then found the small dirt road, which became gravel, which became a ford in a stream coming down from the glacier... and stopped there (no way the car would get across it). The glacier was pretty close by then - just over there, a little ways more. It was only 7:00 pm. We could hike out to it. And be back in Hofn for a hot dinner. Yeah, no problem.

Well, first problem was that our hiking boots weren't waterproof enough to trapse across the stream. Solution: take out my big knee-high rubber boots and wear them across. Then throw them back for Shelley to wear across. But hmmm... the stream may be too wide to throw them across. So stop at the island in the middle, put the hiking boots back on, through the rubber boots to Shelley, have her wear them all the way across, and have her through them to me on the island. Right.

It all worked until Shelley's first throw of a boot landed in the stream, resulting in a pretty wet boot inside. Hmmm. Hike in wet socks? No... Shelley remembers my Mom's solution: put a big plastic bag (the one that we had been holding the rubber boots) inside the boot and then put the foot in. Bingo. Both feet stay dry (Shelley's second throw of the other boot got it to the island okay.)

Right. Onward. Across the glacial outwash plain. Hearing burbling brooks over the left and to the front. We have the rubber boots in case we need to cross another stream. 15 minutes of fast walking. The first mile passes. Glacier looks no bigger. Hmmm. Keep pushing, wind in our faces, but not that cold, but beginning to feel wintery as it comes off the glacier ahead. Another 15 minutes pass - anohter mile. Glacier bigger now, but not there yet. Another 10 minutes pass.

Ah... chilly, but the hike proves worthwhile! We reach the crest of the terminal morrain, and what a view! Not a big glacier, perhaps, but BIG! It has its own lake at the bottom so we cannot get down and touch it, but I shoot a panorama, then retrieve some ice from the lake. Beautiful, clear, hard, cold. Dirty too. Extrememly fine silt, black, underneath. But very cool.

This proves to be Hoffellsjokull, just one glacial tongue of many emanating down from the Vatnajokull, the icecap that covers some 10% of Iceland's land area. Over the course of the next few days, we expect to see many more vistas dominated by larger and smaller glaciers. But this first one, after the long hike, will remain the most vivid. We hiked back to our car, got a hot dinner of fish around 9:30 pm, then hit the sack.