They say the best camera is the one you have with you, and I generally have my phone, though anyone who knows me generally knows I’m not that great about taking it out. Usually it’s packed two layers deep in my messenger bag. Which explains maybe why I don’t have pictures from the start of any activity. Though once I’ve started taking photos, I’m pretty good.
We went to Iceland.
On my calendar, which I use for planning and budgeting and tracking bill payments and pretty much everything else, I had written a short list of the things I wanted to do:
Volcano elevator
Ponies
Hot springs
Glacier
Elves
Mid-Atlantic rift
And then I was talking up my pending vacation, and one of my colleagues turned out to have gone to Iceland numerous times, partly for work but also because his grandmother was from there. He told me he was chatting about this to an Icelandic colleague, who said “who?” My coworker listed off a name or two, and the local said “wait a minute,” and went away and came back and said “she worked here until she retired about three months ago.”
Very cool.
Anyway, so my colleague added to my list:
Geysir (range rover)
Mud baths
Don’t go to McDonald’s
Rotten shark
Black death
There was also another thing I thought of when we were riding in the bus from the airport to our hotel as we arrived (after midnight by now, and still light enough to see) was I wanted to see an arctic fox.
This is Sparky. Or whatever the Icelandic word for Sparky is.
Sparky was playing with some moss.
Sparky was an orphan (or a half orphan -- I guess fox dads aren't engaged parents). Apparently foxes have no natural enemies, being the dominant native mammal, so hunters shoot them so their population doesn't get out of control. Sparky had been taken in by the staff at the base camp of the Inside the Volcano tour, and seemed to be doing okay.
He blends in quite nicely with the ubiquitous lava.
More to come…