Category Archives: General

Default place where things go if they are not categoried or are of general interest.

Drive Back to Reykjavík and The Hraunfossar and Barnafass Waterfalls

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continued… At the base camp, the tour group got back into the regular bus for the return trip to Reykjavík. They passed an aluminum factory. While Iceland did not have aluminum ore deposits, it did have abundant and inexpensive electricity. And a lot of electricity is what was needed to process aluminum. So they bulk shipped in the ore, processed it, and exported it. Apparently, aluminum refining generated a significant amount of revenue for the country.

They stopped at the Hraunfossar and Barnafass waterfalls. Apparently, the smaller falls were Hraunfossar and the bigger ones above them were Barnafass. Here were some smaller falls (Hraunfossa) by the river leading the bigger falls.

Hraunfossar

The main waterfall area (Barnafass) was beautiful.

Barnafass
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The Ice Tunnel Inside Langjökull Glacier, Iceland

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continued… The entrance was small and had a carpeted path to a large room with benches.

The guide said that they’d used the same equipment and crew to make these tunnels as they’d used to make the tunnel under the ocean that they’d driven through on the way to the base of the glacier. These were the longest man-made ice tunnels in the world, and they were created by farmers working to make a tourist attraction. The temperature was just below freezing inside, and apparently stayed relatively consistent year round.

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Flying to Iceland

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Tuesday, May 12, 2026 — On Sunday, Eric spent the morning getting the boat ready to be left for 3-weeks. He added more lines, so we had eight lines in total and should be good to go if a freak windstorm blows in. He switched the power to inverter bypass. He also took out the dinghy motor and tested it – it still wasn’t working.

We normally don’t do school on Sundays, but since we weren’t going to be doing school on the trip, Christi and Keith did a lot of school work. Christi also did laundry and made creative meals with the remaining ingredients onboard that wouldn’t last the 3-weeks we’d be gone. We all packed for the trip.

The boys didn’t remember it was Mother’s Day until late morning. Since there hadn’t been enough food left to fully satisfy everyone for dinner, we went to The Loop to supplement the meal. This was the sunset.

Yesterday, in addition to another mega school day, we puttered around the boat getting things organized for our trip. One of the things we did was flush out the sink. Several little jellyfish went to the through hull where the sink was draining into the river. We assumed they were gobbling up the morsels. 

We had a belated Mother’s Day celebration at Longhorn Steakhouse, located in the Ortega shopping center.

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Sightseeing in Downtown Jacksonville, Florida, USA

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Saturday, May 9 — This morning, the clouds were so thick and dark that it felt ominous out. Eric rinsed down boat and set up the new power cords. We went to lunch at a Japanese restaurant called Sushi Bear, located about a mile away. We noted that it was in the same shopping center as West Marine. The food was good, and it was good value for the money.

While we were in the restaurant, Eric’s watch notified him that rain would start in 10-minutes. And it did start exactly in exactly 10-minutes. After we finished eating, his watch said that rain would now stop for the rest of the day. It didn’t stop as promised, but having faith in the weather app, we drove downtown via surface streets. The area we drove through was very pretty, predominately made up of large, older, stately homes. We stopped at a small commercial strip mall so Eric and Keith could get custard at a place called Whit’s Frozen Custard. They both liked their custard.

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