August 27

Yesterday I took another drive to investigate the west side of the Skagafjordur fjord. The first stop was in Saudarkrokur (which translates to sheep-river-hook) the largest town in Northwest Iceland and the second-largest town on the north coast of Iceland, with a population of 2,635. To put that in perspective, the town is 2 and half times the size of the student population at Crossroads.

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant that served Puffin, the national bird, in a variety of ways. This is the bird that tourists travel miles to nowhere just to see, and here I was able to see it on my plate.

I ordered shrimp instead in honor of the sign on the local processing plant (with a nod to Magritte).

There are a lot of fissures and crevasses in Iceland. The land just splits open forming below road level gullies and streams. It is really hard to keep your eyes on the road and drive at the same time, even when you can see 30 miles ahead and behind and, most often, no other cars in sight.

The low flatlands at the mouth of the Skaga fjord have the grass covered bowling balls that I find so enchanting.

We drove to the end of the paved portion of route 76 to the port town Siglufjorour (pop. 1,206) nestled against imposing mountains. A high point was the Wizard of Oz poster in the (only) restaurant and the docked ship.

The best part of the day was discovering the water rounded columnar basalt stools by the sea in the town of Hofsos (200 residents). A perfect place to relocate the stone someone placed on the wall of a sea cave at Mikro Seitani beach in Samos, Greece.