I had an awful night sleeping in the volcano hut at Þórsmörk.  We were all in one cabin, with the six women in one room of bunk beds.  I got a top bunk, which normally I prefer, but not last night.  The heat was so high that I was roasting most of the night. Although one window had a shade, the other one higher up did not.  The lower bunks were shielded from the light, but not the top bunks, and I apparently left my eyeshade at Lax-a. The bunks were long and narrow, and impossible to get comfortable on.

The upshot is I went to bed early, only to toss and turn for most of the night.  When I last looked at my phone, it was after 4 a.m. and light as day.  I then woke up at 7:15 a.m. with a massive migraine, gathered my stuff as quietly as I could, left a note, and went to the campsite restaurant, got breakfast, and took some headache medication. I noticed that the restaurant had wifi, so I was able to answer some messages before finishing breakfast and heading to the campsite showers.

I got back to the cabin at 9:30 a.m. just as everyone was cleaning up from their breakfast. It was cold, wet, rainy, and very windy.  We had to be out of the cabin by 10, so everyone was packing up to move their stuff to a tent near the restaurant where the 4 p.m. bus would show up.

Most of the group decided to go in a hike to a peak where on a clear day you can get a good view, but I knew I was not up for that, and the day wasn’t clear.  So I hung out again in the restaurant with Sigthor and Bjork.  I did email and journaling for two hours before the group got back. Apparently the hike was very cold and windy, and they could not see much.

We got lunch in the tent, which wobbled in the high winds.  Then a few people set out to see the river, but this time most of the group stayed back.  We hung out on the benches in the community kitchen, and I talked to a guy from Germany who had been hiking through and also got caught in the bad weather.  Susie also helped me marked in yellow highlighter where we had gone on the trip.

Finally I noticed Paul had tried to call me on What’s App, so I went back to the restaurant to get wifi to call him back.  First I had a little scare over my wallet missing until I found it in a small red bag. With the wallet found, I talked to Paul until it was time to board the big bus and head out. We found our little green bus right where we had left it on the sand at the entrance to Thorsmork, where it looked tiny next to the enormous landscape.  We transferred our bags, and headed to the next destination.

Next was Gunnarsholdt, home of the Soil Conservation Service where we would be staying the next two days.  On the way we dropped off Bjork and her daughter, Hekla, who several people in our group had made friends with.  We got keys to our rooms, and I was very glad to have my own room for the first time this trip.  After moving in our stuff, we got together our bathing suits and headed to another one of Iceland’s many swimming pools and hot tubs.  I was so tired that I mostly tubbed, but I did get in 12 laps.

Since today ended up being an off-day, I don’t have any photos, but here is a video of crossing a high-water section of the Markarfljót river taken from inside the big bus.  First we watched a large truck cross the river twice before we attempted it ourselves.