The Blue Lagoon - Last Day in Iceland

Iceland's airport is out of Reykjavik, and on the way is the famous Blue Lagoon, so you can actually buy a tour that will take you from your hostel to the Blue Lagoon and then to the airport. That's what I did my last day in Iceland.

First, the obligatory driving-out pictures:

I wasn't the only one going straight to the airport:

One of the cool things about the Lagoon is that they take your picture and send it to you:

One of the ladies there told me that I was brave to get my picture with the silicone on my face, but I honestly thought that was the point.

Anyway, I had lots of time after showering until my bus came to get me for the airport, so I wandered around the trails outside of the lagoon. That was super cool, because the sun came out and I got to see what it all looked like in the sun:

And finally, some last-minute blurry photos from the bus window as we drove to Keflavik Airport:

I like this picture

And naturally, there was a picture of Leif Erickson at the airport:

Well - that just about wraps up my 2015 Europe adventures. However, it does not quite wrap up my blog, because I found out over Christmas that my parents might let me go on an archaeological trip to...

Turkey!

Assuming the situation doesn't get any worse over there, my next post on this blog will probably be from Turkey! And I will have officially been on three continents by that point, because I'm pretty sure we're going into the part of Turkey that's on Asia. At the moment, it's not the safest place in the world, so it's possible my trip will get cancelled, but God willing, this coming June I will get to trace the routes St. Paul took on his third missionary journey! So, if I wind up going, there will be more pictures to see on my Travel Blog. In the meantime, thank you for looking at my pictures and for commenting, and I will now be posting more frequently on my original blog. 

God bless your day!

Dog Sledding!!!

This is what I needed the sweater for - an event that was exposed to wind chill, where I would not be moving at all, and sitting on a dog sled!

This was cool. This was so cool.

First, from the drive out to the mountain:

And then the dogs!

These dogs are Greenland sledding dogs, not huskies. They're quite small and quite strong; the musher was telling us a story that she had four people on the sled and two feet on the break, going uphill, and the dogs still managed to move the sled. The temperature was around zero, I think, but it was still not as cold as the dogs like it - they like it really cold! They were very friendly, as you can probably tell from the picture, and they love pulling sleds - as you will see.

The sleds seat three people, while the runners in the back can hold the musher and one extra person. Guess who volunteered to stand on the runner first: 

In order to protect their paws from snow, the dogs wore little pink booties:

They're bright pink so that when they fall off, they're easy to see in the snow

The lady in the red coat was our musher. She was originally from France and went to Canada to learn how to mush, and now lives in Iceland.

Once they got the dogs in the traces, they knew it was time to go! They started howling like crazy and jumping against the traces, trying to run! I tried to get a video, but fumbled with my phone and only got some pictures:

Because I was originally on the back, holding onto the handle, I couldn't take any pictures; I was holding on with both hands. But once we paused and switched places, I started taking both pictures and video. A lot of the videos aren't particularly good, because I was trying to remember all the etiquette of shooting with an iPhone, but I think you can see how fast the dogs were moving in all of them:

 We stopped for a little bit to give the dogs a chance to rest and to give us a chance to get our pictures taken with them:

This, according to the musher, was the only actual Alaskan husky; she said the dogs we usually think of as huskies are Siberian huskies, while Alaskan huskies are hybrids of different breeds

One of them knew my feet were cold!

And then we were off and running again!

And, finally, we got back to the base camp, and it was time for the dogs to rest:

I'd write more if my computer weren't so low on battery, but long story short - super cool!

**Update**

Apparently I uploaded the videos as pictures. I did not know that was possible... anyway, to cut on the difficulties, I decided to upload the videos to YouTube and just link to them here: