Our very first full day back in Iceland, we visited the house in Stokkseyri that we´re buying in on - cute and charming and such a nice place to have a little home - and had grilled lamb and all the yummy fixins.

The next day was quieter and we had caught up on some much-needed rest and by the time we were going to get moving it was already noon.  B asked me what I wanted to do, and I didn´t really want to go far, so we decided to hit the Reykjanes peninsula which is where the other pictures have been so far.

My favorite part of the Reykjanes peninsula is Gunnuhver, which is the very very active geothermal area not too far from where the base was. The base where they had just pumped lots and lots of my taxpayer money just to close it down, nice!

At any rate, part of Gunnuhver was closed off because it is so active that the wooden walkways were too hot to walk on but we walked around the other areas and the kids got as much of a kick out of it as I did. The sights, the sounds, the smells were all very exciting.

Arctic terns are so aggressive - it´s the bird I think B hates the most.  The first time I was introduced to them, he wanted to show me how they are, so he took me out to an open field - I had no idea birds nested in huge open fields, silly me at the time (10 years ago) thought birds only nested in trees - and said, “Watch this.”  I sat in the car and thought it strange that he was taking a glass squeegee with him to the field, but whatever.

He took a few steps out and the birds started swirling overhead and making a strange “clicking” sound.  He reached down to pick up a baby bird and then the terns really started attacking.  Every time they´d start clicking, they´d dive and would go for the highest point - hence the squeegee.  That way the birds would only get so far as the squeegee.

The birds attacked the car, got past the squeegee and left him with a few small puncture wounds, and I understood why he didn´t like terns!  Not that he ever made a habit out of picking up baby birds, but if you even do so much as accidentally wander into a nesting field, they will let loose the furor of the birds from Alfred Hitchcock´s movie “The Birds”.