Waiting for three weeks to write my "weekly letter" is a bad idea. These last few weeks have been packed to the brim with fun activities. In order not to bore everyone, I will keep my travelogue to a minimum, and do a Shutterfly book or something later.

Before we began our trip, Jennie and Jordan had us for dinner at their place. Jennie cooked a delicious dish of creamy lemon chicken with pasta. It was fun to visit with them.

Max's Baptism

We were fortunate to be able to fly to Augusta, Georgia for the baptism of Maximus Darren Jackson. We had a little bit of bad luck with this flight--I guess we've just had bad luck flying in general since our trip to Porta Vallarta in March. We arrived in Atlanta just fine, but after nearly reaching Augusta--a very short flight--we were told that the plane was having technical problems and we had to turn around. I guess all the mechanics were in Atlanta. It would have been nice if they'd dropped us off first. We finally arrived around three hours or so after our scheduled time. Elise was also inconvenienced as she was at the airport waiting for us when we were redirected.

However, being with the Jackson's was worth it. We were able to enjoy a trip to the lake (not Lake Lanier, but very reminiscent of it). I'd forgotten how warm the waters are in Georgia. The kids loved the lake. We spent the whole time in the water, so I came away without any pictures.

Roy had to work the next day, so we just hung around home and enjoyed the kids. The adults were able to sneak away for a great dinner at a restaurant called Cork and Flame. We tried ostrich (my first time). It was just a very small sample of meat, sliced extremely thin. It was good. We also had a sampling of several other menu items. Most enjoyable of all, of course, was the company. After arriving back home, we watched Black Widow together on the Disney Channel.

Max was baptized at 11:00 on Saturday. I played the piano, and dad gave a talk on the Holy Ghost. Max was very serious as he received this very important ordinance. We are so proud of him and his choice to be baptized and take upon himself the Savior's name.

After the baptism, we partied--pizza and cupcakes!

Sunday morning. Everyone's ready for church
except Roy and me--we're ready to head to
the airport.

Iceland

After leaving the Jackson's we were off on our adventure.

We knew we had a 6 hour layover in Boston before our red-eye flight to Iceland. Roy thought about what we could do with that 6 hours (too yucky to spend them in the airport). Then he remembered that Jieun's mom lives there and owns a restaurant in the city. He checked the distance and decided it was easily done. We had previously made arrangements with her, so we took a taxi and met up with her and her husband Brad. They even had dinner with us. She was happy and excited to see us and we had a nice visit. Her English is getting a lot better. I think it's amazing she's learned it so well--I'm pretty sure if I had to learn Korean it would be a big problem.

In Boston with Brad and Giok

And then we were off

Highlights of our Iceland Vacation

If I was going to give this trip a title, I'm not sure what I'd call it. Maybe--"Backpacking Through Iceland" or "A Sleepover Every Night.

Of course, we weren't really backpacking, but it did feel a little like we were roughing it in some of the places we stayed. And we did have a sleepover everynight, but we slept in separate rooms.

Iceland was amazing. I am going to share some highlights.

First day

My biggest regret of the trip happened on the first day. We left the airport with Christine and Lyle Peterson, and met up with everyone else at a nearby bakery. Phil and Char, and the Christensen family had all arrived the day before and were ready to go. We wanted to get going, too, because we knew that was best for jet lag. We started off at the Blue Lagoon, a commercial "pool" heated by geo-thermal energy. The best thing about this particular pool was that towels and robes were included in the admission price.

At the blue lagoon--this part was not swimmable. It looked like
ice. I'm sure it is ice in the winter.

It was beautiful, but we decided to head to the next stop to hike to the Fagradalsfjall volcano. First regret, not swimming at the Blue Lagoon. 2nd regret (also on the first day): We arrived at the parking lot for the hike to the volcano. There were porta potties, but I had just been to the bathroom 15 minutes before and I was too embarrassed to go again. I know myself, though, and I should have just swallowed my pride and used the bathroom. We got about half way up the hike, and after climbing a very steep and slippery (from gravel and sand) incline, I realized I needed to use the bathroom. There was no place to hide. One big problem was that I could see where the hikers were hiking to and there were two more steep inclines before we reached the end of the hike. Roy always stays with me, and Christine was with us, too (she couldn't risk a fall because of her shoulder). We thought it was just beautiful where we were and din't think it could really get that much better, so we turned around and hiked back down. This is what we saw:

Christine and Catharine with lava fields in the background

The view from the next level up

This is what we missed:

(Picture procured from the internet)

Water, Water, Everywhere

Nearly everywhere we went there were waterfalls, rivers, streams, ocean...We just wanted to borrow one of those waterfalls to bring home to Utah. Christine told us that after Peter's mission he said, "I don't care if I never see another waterfall." I don't quite understand that because they were awesome!

I have to admit that this picture was taken by Ben Christensen.
I took one, too, but his was better.

Sunsets in Iceland are really cool--because they just look like
this for hours--the sun never really goes down. In the southern
part of Iceland, it did get sort of dark around 1 or 2 in the morning,
but in the Northern part it didn't seem to get dark at all.

Another Highlight--Pristine Water and Air--Everything was so clean

Ben Christensen--we hardly knew he was
on the trip with us he was so quiet--and whenever he could
he'd get ahead of the group and hike all by himself.

I'd label the places we went, but the names were so--Icelandic--that it was almost impossible to keep track. This was a little town where we shopped around and had dinner on the pier.

A Glacier

One of the fun excursions Eliza had planned was a raft trip through the Glaciers. It was amazing. Again, the cleanliness of the air and water was a highlight. It was also really quiet. The guide picked a small iceberg out of the water and we were invited to break off a piece and taste it. It was so pure and delicious. In Utah I have had melted snow water to drink, and I can tell you it was NOT GOOD. This was perfect.

It looks pretty cold, but those coats they gave us were warm, and we didn't even get our feet wet. On this excursion we were able to see a couple of seals as well as the calving of the glacier a couple of times. Amazing!

Churches

There were churches all over Iceland. They all looked the same except for the color they were painted. The religion of Iceland is Christianity, mostly Lutheran, but from what we saw, no one goes to church. The missionary couple in Akureyri told us that they do celebrate Christmas, but it's all about Santa Claus with no emphasis on the Savior.

Christine C. and Lyle Peterson

Church in Akureyri was definitely a highlight and we met some wonderful people. One of the families knew Peter. The saints there love to have tourists come and worship with them.

Hot Pots and Thermal Energy

The thermal energy was great. Most of the places we visited had water heated geo-thermally (is that a word?) Two places had hot tubs that the hosts filled up on demand. We used one of them, it was instantly hot. Probably 104 to 105 degrees. We saw steam from hot pots all over Iceland, and even geysers coming up in the ocean. Sometimes our showers smelled a little bit sulphuric (also not a word).

Lots of Hiking

One of the most awesome hikes was to Hornvik, the northermost tip of Iceland. We took a two hour boat ride to the mountain, then began a hike (it took about an hour to climb).

Christine and Steve, they rafted us all to shore.

This is the top. I'm laying at the edge of the cliff. You can't tell in this
picture, but it was 790 feet down. It was an eerie feeling looking over the edge.

At the top of the cliff

Ben and Eliza (and Steve and Phil) continued the hike up
that far mountain and around it, then back to the boat.

Catharine, Charlotte, Christine

Beaches

There were several beaches, a red sand beach, a golden sand beach, and several black sand beaches. The one near Vik was the most beautiful.

Ben, Amelia, and Steve. The closer you got to the water, the finer
the sand became. As you moved away from the water the sand became rock, and then
gradually got bigger.

At our final dinner of the trip, someone (I think it was Phil) suggested we each tell everyone what our favorite part of the trip was. Charlotte said, "Whatever we were seeing at the time." Phil really loved the small cabin-like Air BnB we stayed in that had beds for seven when we had eleven people. I think he was being just a bit tongue in cheek, but as he said, it's something we will remember. Roy and I slept in bunkbeds that night. We were supposed to have two units, but the host saw the name Eliza Christensen twice, got confused, and rented the other unit out. We weren't there very long--maybe 10 hours. We only had one bathroom, but we were getting used to that (which is why I almost entitled this--backpacking through Iceland :)

This is a pretty accurate picture of the size of the room, too.

Then Phil amended his choice of a favorite thing and said he loved the calving of the glaciers. Eliza loved the boat ride and hike to Hornvik, and the black beach in Vik. Roy loved the Western Fjords because they were so isolated (we rode on a lot of dirt roads, which was an adventure in itself). Christine enjoyed watching Lyle Peterson give candy to complete strangers which broke the ice and encouraged people to open up, and Steve loved going to church and meeting up with friends from their previous visit. I think Amelia said the volcano, and I can't remember what Ben said. The Petersons weren't with us at the time because they don't like fish, and that was all that was offered at this particular restaurant.

I loved all of the above, but I said that I loved talking to the people. We met a couple in one very little town. They owned the hamburger joint we ate at. The husband (I assume they were married) said that they loved living there and would never live anywhere else. They had two kids and he told us the kids were off playing--they had no idea where, but they were not worried at all. They said that was one of the privileges of living where they lived. He told us about the salmon farming going on in the ocean. The Icelandic people don't like salmon, and they don't like the farming because it pollutes the ocean, but they have no choice because it brings money to the government. When we left his restaurant, he gave everyone a chocolate bar. We bought a couple of candy bars from him, also. We asked which were his favorite and he showed us two. One of them was chocolate with black licorice inside (black licrorice is in a lot of their candy). We liked it so much that later we bought some snack size ones in bags at the grocery store to bring home. Another man we talked to, also working in a restaurant, looked like a viking. He even had a shirt on with 8 or 10 vikings--all exactly alike, with different emotions listed by each one. Happy, sad, elated, mad, etc. He told us that Icelanders keep excellent records of their ancestry, it's very important to them. He had red hair, and he told us that it was because the Icelanders brought in slaves from Ireland. He showed us a picture of his Ford Excursion that he had specially fixed up for use in Iceland. It had huge tires to handle the winters there. He said his "girlfriend" was in Germany at the moment (she owned the restaurant) but then later he told us they'd been married for 38 years. They had five kids and several grandchildren. It was a shot gun wedding, they were only 16.

There was so much to see that we were busy from morning until night every single day. I have so many pictures that I could go on and on, but that's not the purpose of this letter. I will put in just a few more scenic pictures.