Iceland--afternoon of day 2

This pretty little farm sits at the base of Eyjafjallajokull, the volcano that erupted in 2010 and stopped air traffic around Europe. The farm has been in the same family since 1906 and produces meat and dairy.

Whoa! No coat! Take a picture!...oh wait, I did.

The picture on the left shows the ash cloud during the eruption.

This southern Iceland coastline was well and truly amazing. Beautiful, desolate, magnificent, isolated, gorgeous!

I think we're only wearing one coat under our rain coats. Practically a heat wave.

We were blessed with pretty blue skies for most of the trip.

The backlighting and shadows from the nearby cliffs makes this picture look like it's taken in the evening.

We collected some sand from this black sand beach. Tiny crushed lava rock, we learned later as we were going through American airline security, looks very much like explosive powder! More on that later.

Vik is Iceland's southern most town. Population about 450.

Funny boy.

And now I know why Curt kept asking me to scoot over.

We saw many red-roofed pretty churches. 

Skogarfoss!

We hustled back to Reykjavik to be on time to catch our boat for the Northern lights tour. We were fortunate to have a clear night and what the boat guide said was a better than average view of the Northern Lights. Everyone on the boat was respectfully silent in awe as we watched the green lights appear in the sky. And then they even danced across the darkness for a short while! I tried to take a few pictures, but I knew my camera wasn't really capturing the beauty, so I set it aside to just enjoy the moment.  After meeting the couple missionaries that morning, we both said how great it would be to serve a mission in Iceland. Such a beautiful place!

Iceland--the morning of day 2

The second day was Sunday and we drove about 2 hours to church in the small town of Selfoss. There is actually a small chapel in Rekjavik, but they didn't meet until 1:00. This branch met at 11:00 and was on the way to see some waterfalls and beaches in the south.

Thermal energy from all the volcanic action.

This small branch had about 30 people in attendance on Easter Sunday. Six of us were visitors and 4 were missionaries. The other visitors were a family from Kevin's mission in Ohio. They didn't actually know Kevin, but it was fun to have that connection. There were two Elders and a couple missionary. We were given earbuds to wear so we could hear the translation of the services from Icelandic. Curt was asked to bear his testimony and the branch president translated for him. The cute missionary had a hard time translating, so at one point a member of the branch presidency stepped in and helped. Most people speak English really well since they learn it starting in elementary. The meeting was great and we enjoyed the spirit. There are only two branches in the entire country with another small group that is about to become a branch. We had to admire the dedication of these wonderful members.

Seljalandsfoss. This is a beautiful waterfall that you can walk behind. It's in an area with 5 other large waterfalls.

There was an old farmstead on the site that is now owned by the state.

The walls of many of the outbuildings where built with rocks and come out of the earth with sod roofs.

Sitting in the foundation of an old building.

This waterfall, Gljufrafui,  fell down behind a section of rock....

...and there was a watery path to follow to get up close. We went partway up before deciding we didn't want to get totally wet.

Seljalandsfoss again.

Behind Seljalandsfoss

Look who's at the end of the rainbow!

Eons ago these cliffs used to be the coastline and the water fell directly to the sea.