Good morning, everyone! Today we decided to use the morning to explore the two waterfalls directly behind our property. We are in the middle of no where. There is a small hotel nearby that acts as a jumping off point for area glacier activities for some. Besides that, our house and the other houses on this property are all there is. We think someone bought a piece of land and started building guest houses (the land is called Ekra.) There is a lot of construction equipment around so it seems they are still building. There aren’t facilities of any sort, however, for about an hour in any direction.
First though, after breakfast, a new place meant finding a spot for soccer training (which here just meant the parking area and deck as, like I said, we are in the middle of no where, haha!)
The waterfalls were fun as we just walked into our backyard and started to climb and went up as far as was possible. We got to hike over rocks and around the water and enjoy beautiful views!
Tomorrow morning we have a guided boat ride on the larger of the two glacier lagoons in the area so we decided to go explore both lagoons this afternoon. Both were gorgeous and unreal! They are at the foot of a glacier finger of Vatnajokull Glacier (the largest in Iceland.) They are created solely from glacier melt. It is so much that it has created these lagoons, the smaller of which includes a large river; the larger of which, Jokulsarlon, is quite massive and hundreds of feet deep at it’s deepest point. It furthered my horror at the hit all of these glaciers are taking due to climate change.
The first thing that blew my mind (besides the effects of climate change) at Jokulsarlon was seeing families of ducks swimming in the lagoon. These families include ducklings and were swimming just as they would on a spring or summer lake in the US…but they were in a freezing cold Icelandic glacier lagoon, swimming past icebergs that have broken off from the glacier. There are icebergs in the lagoon ranging from about the size of a basketball to ones larger than your house…and only 10% of the iceberg is visible (the rest sits under the water line.) The boats stay a certain distance away as the icebergs, on occasion, tip/flip and you don’t want your boat getting caught in the 90% of the iceberg that is underwater that then comes up to the surface. You can tell which icebergs have recently flipped as the portion of the ice under the water tends to be blue. If you see a large iceberg with a lot of blue, it likely is one that recently flipped and the blue portion came above the surface. Some icebergs also have black lines in them, signifying a layer of volcanic ash from an eruption in whatever year that particular section of ice was formed. At Jokulsarlon, you can see a number of seals here and there that swam in from the ocean. At high tide, it is also sort of a funny site if you observe the lagoon around the outer area where the lagoon and ocean mix. It creates a very large whirlpool affect where a large iceberg flows out of the lagoon toward the ocean and then hits the ocean tide coming out and is pushed right back into the lagoon (occasionally, and loudly, crashing into another iceberg!) We hiked partially around the smaller glacier lagoon, and, at Jokulsarlon, we went to the edge of the flow where it meets the ocean at Diamond Beach.
Diamond Beach is called such because, at low tide, the icebergs from Jokulsarlon are pushed all the way out of the lagoon (to sea) and occasionally are lightly pushed back by the tide, landing on the black sand beach like icy diamonds sitting on the sleek dark sand. It is a really beautiful and odd sight! After a little time at Diamond Beach, we went home, cooked dinner, and went to bed excited for our boat tour at Jokulsarlon the next day.
Oh…I hope you enjoy his video of Ezra and Naomi making up one of their many songs in the car 🙂
See you on the next mountain!
July 11, 2025 – Total Steps 10,463 (Decent Elevation on Morning Hike)
