Monday, 25 July 2022

A good night’s sleep

As I’ve aged I find that I fare less well on less sleep; or perhaps, I never fared well on less sleep, but when young was too inexperienced to notice my own deficits. Regardless, I scheduled my trip to have a ‘recovery day,’ so that I wouldn’t be dragging on the first day of the tour. Additional benefits are decreased stress — I was unconcerned the cascading delays of the day before would cause any disruption in my schedule – and a chance to wander about Reykjavik.

I did indeed sleep well and long, and the occasional surfacings familiar to time-shifted travelers did not turn into insomniac intervals. In the morning I had breakfast, wrote a bit, and saw Dave Wilhelm arrive; I went out and met him and was introduced to others: Maggie, and (I think it was Kate and David).

The trip, in general

In a bit I shall wander around Reykjavik a bit more, but first I’ll provide an overview of the trip. Basically we proceed from Ryekjavik counterclockwise around the island. The first two days are the Reykjanes and Snafalles penninsulas, for which we remain based in Reykjavik (and are thus able to accommodate travel delays that may afflict other members of our group). Then we’ll head east along the south coast, which will take us past two of the major glaciers/ice caps, and the landforms shaped and created by their melting. And then north, west and back south, with a few ventures into the interior. The map of the trip looks like this:

These maps show :
(1) the expression of the mid-Atlantic ridge (solid red lines), and the transverse facture zones connecting them (dashed); then red lines show intraplate volcanic belts.
(2) Age of the rocks. In general, the newest material is, as one would expect, at the expression of the spreading ridge, and then it get’s older moving away from the ridge; the exception (black area in the right map) is that there is very new sedimentary material along the southcoast from glacial outwash.

The Afternoon

I spent the last bit of Day 0 wandering around trying to stay awake, and then a few outings today as well. I forgot to turn off GPS, so you get to see the full extent of my pre-tour wanderings.