Today is the last day most of us are in Iceland for this trip. As I started this post, we were completing a tour of the Golden Circle after a few days in beautiful Reyjkavik. Now we are preparing for departure.
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I wanted to post some of the highlights of our trip. There’s a rough order to them, but don’t take the numbering too seriously – it’s been a great experience all-around. Without further ado:
- The volcano is truly incredible. It was not uncommon for people to spontaneously shout “Wow!” and “Oh my god!” as the lava burst up from the ground.
- We woke up every day for a few weeks with a view of a fjord.
- We did a glacier hike on Sólheimajökull, with two awesome guides.
- This was a historically successful round of data collection, both on the drone side and on the biology side. We’ll write and share a lot more about this in the next few months.
- We shared space with the group of phenomenal students from the University of Glasgow. We also collaborated with them on multiple occasions, learning a lot about different ways to study wildlife and local sites.
- THE FOOD – you probably don’t associate Iceland with food culture (I certainly didn’t), but our meals were delicious.
- The architecture and decorations are so distinctly Icelandic.
- Amazing photography and video – in high quality and high quantity.
- Walking along the boundary between the North American and European plates.
- Guided tour from our Skalanes hosts – who incidentally are awesome people – of a stretch of eastern Iceland.
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Some of my personal honorable mentions include:
- Trail running at Skalanes is breathtaking.
- Blue glacier ice is real neat.
- The National Museum of Iceland is fascinating and well-done.
- Rainbow roads in both Seyðisfjörður and Reykjavik highlight what a welcoming place this country is – also perfect reminders of Pride Month in the U.S.!
- My first-in-my-lifetime tour of a beautiful country happened alongside people I admire who teach me things every single day. What more could I ask for?
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If you haven’t already, check out this interview with Charlie and Emmett, conducted by Cincinnati Public Radio.
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In addition to our success this year, we’ve also set up some great new opportunities for future years. With our long-time friend and collaborator Rannveig Þórhallsdóttir, we’ve added the cemetery in Seyðisfjörður to our list of sites to survey. We believe there may be historically-significant artifacts to be found there, and our drone work lends itself well to finding out.
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Finally, here’s the trip by the numbers:
- 7 Earlhamites
- 26 days
- 183 GB of initial drone images and initial assemblies
- 2 great hosts at Skalanes
- 6 outstanding co-dwellers
- 4 guides at 2 sites
- 1 perfect dog
- N angry terns
- 1 amazing experience
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And that’s a wrap. Hope to see you again soon, Iceland!