• Move Fast and Break Nothing
  Lots of great ideas in this talk, loved this one: ".. Instead of ‘will this code break the application?’, our tests are more and more measuring ‘will this code be maintainable and more resilent towards errors in the future?’."
  (categories: github process programming communication testing )

• Littlest dude had his birthday this weekend so we went to Legoland, which was packed but we managed to have a good time, drove home, made my sausage / sweet potato / egg hash for dinner (adults only). Good day.
• Mommy got sick and stayed in bed so we kept super busy today. Birthday presents kept the vikings satisfied for hours while I made breakfast, mopped, did dishes, bathrooms, mowed the lawns, pulled weeds and then we did a trip to the tire store (exciting!), dropped off the car to get 2 new tires, had lunch at The Griffin, got 2 geocaches in / around Caversham Court and then picked up the car and headed back home. Sort of the opposite of a weekend driving through Iceland.

Woke up not too early at Sundabakki Guesthouse, had a nice breakfast and enjoyed homemade “mama” cakes from the owner of the house who has 5 of her own children and 14 grandchildren, 13 of which are boys so we got extra special nice treatment. Hit the road at 8:30ish so that we could get back to Reykjavík with a chance to see some of the sights in the city.

First stop on way back was at a museum in Borgarnes called the Settlement Center which had two very nice walk through exhibits with audio guides which our band of vikings didn’t make it completely through. We did have a very nice snack break in their coffee shop while the vikings played on the floor.

Next, Karen really wanted to get an Icelandic sweater so she found THE place (called Álafoss) in a little town called Mosfellsbær, which turned out to be a really neat stop. She shopped while walked the vikings around and then we (the vikings) discovered a shop where a guy (Palli Kristjánsson) made and sold all kinds of custom knives, which was really interesting for me and the oldest, not so much the little ones who just wanted to put sheep horns on their head:

I ended up buying a really beautiful Santoku knife with a handle made from the horn of a reinder, the hoof of an Icelandic horse, ebony and marbled padauk. I’m keeping it in a box until we get back home.

We finally found Mommy, who got her sweater and then piled back into the car to drive the rest of the way to Reykjavík. The tunnel Hvalfjörður was closed for re-paving which added an hour or so to the drive but we got back to Reykjavík in the afternoon, checked back into our hotel, drove over to the Perlan to look out over all of Reykjavík:

and also had ice cream. 🙂

Finally, on our last drive we headed out to jump into the tourist trap that is Bláa Lónið (The Blue Lagoon) which is about 40 minutes from downtown but was well worth it for the weary travelers:

and then ended up back in the city for dinner at Íslenski barinn, which was fantastic.

On our last day (Sunday), we had breakfast, returned the rental car and then walked around downtown, checking out Sólfar (Sun Voyager):

visiting the Maritime Museum (free for adults with kids, not highly recommended but nice if you need to waste an hour before you have to get on a plane), getting hot dogs (which are apparently some kind of Icelandic specialty but weren’t any better than what you’d get in Chicago):

and then spending our last bits of cash at a crepe shop which just happened to arrive with a giant pile of ice cream:

All told, a great trip, highly recommended, even in October although I think we got really lucky with the weather. I’d love to go back in July or August and hike around some glaciers and spend some time in the highlands, maybe in a couple years.

Stats:

• Museums : 2
• Hot dogs : 5
• Giant piles of ice cream: 2
• Geocaches: 0!

We thought going into the trip that there’d be a couple days of long driving but for the most part we were able to make a bunch of stops every day and see a bunch of things… except this day. Think the Google Maps estimate for this day was north of 4 hours so we tried to get an early start so that we could get somewhere and maybe do something in the latter half of the day. The guesthouse we stayed at didn’t have a formal breakfast but he provided tokens for us to use at a local “bakarí”, which was fantastic. We had donuts and ham and cheese croissants at Aðalbakarí and then hit the road.

Our first stop was for an easy to find geocache that was at a statue in the middle of nowhere, everyone got to stretch their legs for a bit and then we packed it in again and drove on roads like this:

at which point I must now pause and say that driving around Iceland was like watching a really long and slow but extremely beautiful nature movie. I thought a number of times that Iceland is like the island that resulted from Hawaii (volcanoes, oceans, etc.) and Alaska (glaciers, snow, fishing, etc..) and some state in the middle of the US (cows, sheep, horses, etc..) all getting together and saying “let’s make an island that has the best parts of all of what we have.”, which is to say that driving wasn’t a chore at all, except for the gravel roads in some places… OH and the precarious cliffs that we drove right on top of to get out of Siglufjörður, other than that though, amazing.

Second stop, which I can’t remember how we found (think it was the navigator) turned out to be really cool. I think she was looking for geocaches as a place for us to stop and she found this geocache at an abandoned house (had been abandoned for 70 years) that you had to drive off road to even get close to. Apparently it’s name is Svarðbæli, but you can read more about it here. We drove out the 4×4 road to about 1/2 mile away and then hoofed it on the gravel road the rest of the way. The geocache itself was a bear to find (had to enter the really old house, climb up to the second floor and then it was hidden away in the rafters, I couldn’t find it, Karen found it later) but the views and the walk were brilliant:

Everyone got to horse around a bit and get their wiggles out which was nice. Didn’t see an option to put an offer down on the house but if I was a hermit, I think I’d want to live here:

We made our picnic lunch in the back of the car, if I remember correctly this was the day that someone decided that they didn’t want a PB&J for lunch which meant that they had to wait until dinner for food. Doesn’t pay to be fussy in our family.
And then we drove:

until our next stop, a hill called Helgafell, which is called “holy mountain” and is a 227 meter high volcanic cone that, drum roll, had a geocache on top, which we found and then got to enjoy the views from the top:

A short drive later and we were at our “hotel” for the evening in another little town, this one called Stykkishólmur, in probably the smallest of all the rooms we had on the trip but we made do. We got there a bit early hoping to find something to do but there wasn’t much open at all (more stuff in the summer) so we hiked up to the top of the lighthouse:

which is called Súgandisey and tried to make sure no one fell off a cliff, then hoofed it back a mile or so into the little town center where the only place to eat that was open at 5pm was a little pizza shop called Stykkið, which ended up having GREAT pizza.

Kids went to bed, I missed a geocache on top of the lighthouse and had to go back at night with my headlamp to find it:

which wasn’t too hard to do, short of the wind and cold.
Stats:

• Light houses: 1
• Abandoned houses: 1
• Geocaches: 4

Already back from the trip, didn’t have time at night to do days 7, 8, 9 and 10 but I’m trying now. It’s never as good days after when you can’t remember all the little details though. Either way, Day 7 started early just like every morning on this trip since everyone was in the same room and the littlest person that lives with us just cannot keep his wiggles and sounds to himself and MUST share them with EVERYONE else in the room as soon as it turns 6am, sometimes earlier. I tried to keep him in bed and quiet for as long as possible, didn’t work all that well.

We had breakfast at our “hotel”, which was really a house converted into a “hotel”, which was like most of the places we stayed. I remember that pickled herring was on the table set out for folks if they were in the mood, I had a pickled herring plate for dinner on the first night we were in town but could never pull the trigger for breakfast.

After breakfast I took the boys out for a short walk around the harbor in Húsavík both because it a short walk and because there were a couple geocaches but mostly because it’s impossible to pack up the room while three crazy horses are trampling everything. We found two on our short walk, one an old church built out of Norwegian wood supposedly in a Swiss style although that’s been debated in the comments on the geocache log (you can see pictures there) and the other right outside the whale musuem, which we would have loved to have visited but it opened at 10am and we had plans for the day (lots of driving!). Here’s a shot of one of the boats in the harbor that we walked / skipped / ran by:

The dudes and I walked around a bit more (saw some REALLY interesting looking shops right on the waterfront where guys were working on fixing boats) and then headed back to the guesthouse to help Mommy finish the packing.

Our first stop for the day was at another amazing waterfall (Goðafoss), which also happened to be REALLY cold, so cold in fact that the mist from the waterfall was frozen on top of the sand and rocks leading up to the waterfall which made walking a bit of an adventure.

The biggest one and I went and tracked down the geocache that was at this waterfall and we took a bunch of pictures:

got some wiggles out and then packed it in for the long drive up to the northern most point that we’d hit on the trip. We needed a break on the way and so we ended up spending a bunch of the afternoon walking around the second biggest “city” in Iceland (Akureyri) where we had a great lunch at a hostel / restaurant, took pictures with a couple trolls (Karen hasn’t uploaded her pictures yet), found a couple geocaches (had to walk the dogs, err kids) and then went to this “christmas shop” (in Icelandic: Jólahúsið) which was supposed to be really great for kids , which ended up being ok for kids but not something that was going to keep their attention for longer than 15 minutes but that was long enough for us to get our Christmas ornament for the year (hi Grammie!).

Finally, we did the drive up to Siglufjörður (66° north!), which is a teensy little town right on the water that I read later is sometimes not accessible at all in the winter and it was here that we had our first bit of rain (we were very lucky the entire trip and didn’t get much rain at all even though October is supposedly the rainiest of all seasons in Iceland). We got in pretty late (6:30pm), dropped off our bags and walked down to the harbor to find some dinner:

The guy that rented us our house for the night said there were only two restaurants open in the winter, one that had homemade food and another that had fried food and pizza. Sadly the homemade food place was closed but we ended up having a great experience at Veitingastaðurinn Torgið where the hostess and waitress brought us out crayons and TOYS and generally made our dinner really fun. Food was good and we ended up having to run back up the hill to the house because it started hailing on us.

We stayed the night at the The Herringhouse, which if you ever get a chance to stay at, is very nice and has a shower that’s to die for.

If I ever get to go back, it looks like there are some really really neat hiking trails that are easily accessible from the town, would be amazing to hike up into the hills at sunset in the summer:

Stats:

• Trolls: 2
• Waterfalls: 1
• Amazing showers: 1
• Geocaches: 5

• Beaver Brook School – "Learn Wild"
  This looks amazing.
  (categories: design building outdoors learning cabins )

NO VOMIT! We had an entire night with no one vomiting! Breakfast bright and early again and then we hit the road, big day today.

We drove for about 30 minutes and bagged our first geocache at a place called Tveir Brú and then did a nice hike up to a waterfall:

Said geocache was NOT kid friendly so again, if you’re ever in Iceland driving around Tveir Brú with small children, make sure they walk up to the edge of the 50 foot cliff where the cache is hidden with their head up, not staring at the GPS.

Second stop was at Krafla which apparently is a “caldera”, where we did a short (2 miles?) walk out over a flat plain:

to a small hill with a bunch of fissure vents and bubbling pools of waters:

On the way to the hill Reed made friends with about 10 lovely Japanese people, all of whom gave him (or he gave them?) a high five.

A 10 minute drive later and were we at Námafjall, which is a geothermal area with boiling mudpools and steaming fumaroles and if you’re not wearing disposable booties over your shoes like all the people getting off of the tour buses were, a giant mess for the car. Beck couldn’t take the smell and had to go back to the car (pretty sure he just wanted to finish the book he was reading) but we forced the little dudes to walk around with us. Mud pots were cool but I think this was my favorite:

We did lunch out of the trunk (peanut butter and jelly, apples and if you finished your sandwich, a cookie or two) and then we were back on the road again on our way to Lake Mývatn. Our first stop was at a place called Hverfjall, which is “… a tephra cone or tuff ring volcano in northern Iceland, to the east of Mývatn” as my friends at Wikipedia say. We did the 4×4 gravel road out to the base of the volcano and after a bit of prodding to get up this trail:

everyone made it to the top of the mountain, although not without us having to break out the “You’re a mountain lion! Growl like one!” strategy to get certain people up the hill that weren’t excited about climbing the mountain:

which everyone had to join in on:

but eventually all led to this:

Cool spot.

Our slave driver navigator then proceeded to direct us to Dimmuborgir (a large area of unusually shaped lava fields east of Mývatn) where we did yet another short hike out to see one of the structures which supposedly looks like an old cathedral:

Pretty sure at this point that everyone was really cold and tired and we completely lucked out because the very next thing we did after getting back into the car was a bath in the natural hot springs:

which was AMAZING for all involved, especially people that had floaties. Highly recommended if you’re ever driving through northern Iceland after a long day of volcano hiking and mud pot viewing.

Day only got better though because I found an amazing restaurant / farm on Foursquare called Vogafjos Cowshed Cafe, where we (adults) not only had an EPIC meal (braised lamb shanks and pan fried artic char) but we got to watch cows pooping and peeing and then eventually get milked which if you’re between the ages of 2 and 5 is PRETTY COOL:

Finally, we drove to the hotel, which was another 30 miles away and everyone hit the sack.
Stats:

• Weird mud pots and fissures: too many to count
• People that had to be encouraged to make mountain lion sounds to bring out their inner lion to make it up the mountain: 1
• People vomiting at night: 0 (WOOHOO!)
• Geocaches: 2

We spent the night at a farm (Brunnholl) that, like most places, was in the absolute middle of nowhere and got there the night before after it got dark so when we woke up (after the middle one threw up a minimum of 10 times in the middle of the night) we had some breakfast and then took a bit of time to look around. First thing we noticed outside was a border collie named Mila, who was carrying a stick and very obviously wanted me to play with her. The dudes and I exited through the side of the dining room and stumbled on to not only a very playful and determined dog but also a trampoline (partially frozen) and a sandbox full of black sand, which all combined to occupy us for at least 15 minutes before we discovered the other side of the farm, starting with the ATV:

which I’m pretty sure Reed would have figured out how to drive away if the key had been in the ignition. But better than the ATV were the frozen puddles, all of which had to be stomped on or hit with a stick and the Icelandic horses that they had in pasture, one of which I became very close friends with:

Pretty sure she wanted to get in the car with us to go on the rest of the trip, sadly we had no room for her. We ended up sticking around the farm and meeting the cows, hanging with the horses and generally having a relaxing farm morning until about 10:30 or 11am, much later than our normal departures.

This turned out to be a good thing because there wasn’t much to see or at least there wasn’t much that we stopped to see on Day 5. We ended up nabbing a geocache (always good to get out, stretch the legs, pee and get some little dude energy out) that was on a side road and then made it to have lunch at Kaffi Steinn in Djúpivogur, which is teensy little town right on the water.

Back in the saddle an hour later, we drove and drove… and then on a whim I pulled off at a black sand beach that turned out to have some good climbing and rock throwing facilities that gave everyone a breather from being the car:

and then we turned inland and drove through some beautiful mountain ranges:

although the entire country is a giant beautiful mountain range in some ways (would be a good bet by the way, I doubt you could be anywhere in Iceland on a clear day and not be able to see a giant mountain range somewhere).

We eventually made it to our final destination, which turned out to be a newly renovated hotel called Gistihúsið Egilsstöðum in Egilsstaðir which was VERY nice compared to where we had been staying. We dropped our stuff off and then immediately got back in the car to go and see a lake that supposedly had a monster in it, dropped off our first “trackable” geocache on the way to that:

and then drove over to see a waterfall that ended up being a hike that we couldn’t make before the sun went down. Dinner at Subway because it was cheap. Note: no meatball subs in Europe.
Stats:

• Ice puddles smashed: too many to count
• Icelandic horses that are my best friend: 1
• People vomiting at night: 1
• Geocaches: 2

Day 4 of the trip started early (again) with the two year old up and at’em at 0600. We got to go outside and watch the sunrise (remember that the sun doesn’t really “rise” until about 8am in October in Iceland) and play in the snow / ice, which was pretty awesome if you happened to be 4 and 2 years old. View from the hill a couple hundred yards away from the house looked like this:

I decided that I’m coming back to Iceland to hunt with Robert (our host) in 10 years, he’s a guide up in the western fjords.

Got a longer bit of driving in today, we drove through the misty fields of moss covered rock that looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss film:

and read about the mist hardships, which not only dramatically impacted Iceland but caused mayhem all over Europe and likely contributed to the French Revolution. A bit later we came across a waterfall with a geocache… or at least it was supposed to have a geocache but after a bit of scrambling through barbed wire fences and then underneath a giant boulder and finally up a hill we didn’t find the geocache, which was most likely removed by the property owners on either side of the waterfall that don’t like geocachers and as such, most likely hate babies, baseball and America. We (Beck, Kai and I) did have a great time though and hey, awesome waterfall:

30 seconds down the road we visited Dverghamrar (a set of basalt rock columns) which immediately turned into a rock climbing session for all involved. Beck made it up to the top or at least very close to the top of the rock formation, followed closely by his little brother who wouldn’t have had it any other way.

There was a geocache here which we “logged” but it was one of those educational ones that you have to answer questions for and feels more like homework than actual fun. We’ll count it though. Lunch was at a picnic table overlooking the rock formation (peanut butter and jelly and cucumbers on the side) and then we started the big drive for the day, which had scenes like this:

Big drive ended at Skaftafell National Park, where we decided I would go in to the visitors center and ask for good things for kids to do. I desperately wanted to step foot on a glacier just to say that we had done so and asked the receptionist if we could walk on a glacier somewhere. She said “no, not without a guide”, very firmly. I then asked if I could just put ONE foot on a glacier without a guide to which she again said “no” without any hesitation. I figured out (I’m pretty smart) that I wasn’t going to set foot on a glacier but proceeded to drive the short distance that she had pointed out to where we could get close to the glaciers and then we hiked a bit to see said glaciers and OH MY GOODNESS are they huge and I now understand why she said we couldn’t set foot on one, at least here. They were AWE inspiring and if I ever make it back, I’m definitely getting a guide and doing the crampon / hike on them thing. They look amazing:

But the day wasn’t over yet! Next on the list was the glacier lagoon which sounded interesting but we hadn’t done much research on it and didn’t book any of the boat trips not knowing if they’d allow 2 year olds so we arrived and saw this HUGE lake full of icebergs and a bunch of bright yellow and white amphibious vehicles that we immediately bought tickets to go on and hopped on one just five minutes after getting out of the car:

Boys had a pretty good time, we got to “eat” iceberg ice (which was probably the young kid highlight of the day) and then spent the rest of the time looking for porpoises and seals, which apparently inhabit the lagoon to no avail, but then the icebergs were pretty cool too:

After all that, we still had more awesome left in us and not coincidentally, needed dinner. We had recommendations to eat lobster in a town called Hofn and ended up at a place called Kaffi Hornið, where Karen and I split 400g of small lobster tails which were succulent and almost sweet and disappeared very quickly off the plate as did a couple of Einstök White Ales. We then hightailed it to the hotel for the night and crashed, everyone being super tired.
Stats:

• Times eating ice and snow: 2
• Geocaches: 2
• Waterfalls: 1
• Hot chocolate: yes!
• Massive glaciers that blow your mind: more than 5, lost count

Oldest kid woke up happy and not barfing. We had a successful breakfast with a family from Canada who thought our little troop of boys was amazing, the dad at the other table ended up bring Reed a pancake and some milk because Reed asked him for more food. They didn’t have to travel with us in the car though.

We got out on the road by 9ish again and our first stop was to pet some Icelandic horses that were close to the road. They tried to eat my hand but I wouldn’t let them. Also, Mommy and Daddy had a “discussion” about parking on the shoulder and the appropriate angle that a car could be parked without the car tipping over. Needless to say, the car did not tip over.

Second stop was for gas, which was super confusing (in Iceland they do weird things like a) not using English on the terminal, b) requiring that you specify how much money you want to spend up front rather than letting you choose to fill it up and c) don’t have manned pumps, which is nice if it’s the middle of the night but not so good when you just want to fill up during the easy and talk to someone about how things work) and eventually led to a call from my bank, who were wondering why I all of a sudden got multiple authorizations for money from a gas station in the middle of nowhere in Iceland (I’d say the fraud protection that kicked in there was spot on). Mommy also purchased donuts at the gas station, which looked amazing but apparently had cardamom, which made them taste a bit off.

Third stop was a set of waterfalls (Seljalandsfoss), one of which you could climb behind, which we proceeded to do and got not soaked but not exactly dry either, everyone had fun here:

Next, we stumbled on to the Eyjafjallajökull Visitor Centre (which Karen had seen a movie about on the plane on the way in), which was created by a farmer and his wife after their farm was almost ruined by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010. Said visitors center was really well done and we saw a great movie about the volcano and how it affected their farm and family.

Back in the car again (you’ll notice a trend)… we drove to a great waterfall called Skógafoss, which we all climbed up (kind of, Reed was on my back) and then lucked upon a geocache and took a bunch of pictures from up on top.

We had lunch at a picnic table near the parking lot and then drove about 30 seconds over to the Skógasafn (Skógar Museum), which is an Icelandic folk / history museum which had a bunch of really great stuff including a stuffed two headed lamb:

some great skeletons and a museum reception desk guy that was a bird watcher (with a bicep tattoo that he had to show us) who played guitar in a heavy metal band who just about did a backflip when we told him we lived in Portland. He had been there and played at the Roseland theater a couple years ago. He was super awesome and reminded us that there was an old plane that had crash landed many years ago (1973) that we could drive out to (details). Beck and I had seen pictures of this plane when doing research on Iceland (it makes for some iconic photographs) and so we found it on the GPS and drove the couple miles of gravel road / black sand out to find it and lucked up on a geocache at the same time. Everyone had a great time banging on the old plane.

If you ever find yourself randomly driving around the entire island of Iceland, you should definitely make it a point to drive out to this plane. 🙂

We were stretching it on the “kids in the car all day” front at this point and so the iPad came out and Karen and I got to tromp around Dyrhólaeyjarviti, which is a great point that looks out over black sand beaches:

and has some clever looking arches:

Finally, we drove to our “hotel”, which turned out to be a converted house that was run by a fantastic man named Robert, who was managing it for the winter for his friends. We didn’t know that he could have made us dinner and so got dinner at some horrible fast food joint before arriving (because who knows if the “hotel” was going to have food?) but he turned out to have studied with the top wild game chef in Iceland and after we put our dudes down for the night, got to watch him put together a splendid dinner for the one other couple that was staying at the house. We had a great night chatting with Robert and the other couple (also from Canada, apparently it was Canadian Thanksgiving weekend) and then we hit the sack.

Stats:

• Geocaches: 2
• Waterfalls: 1
• Ice cream: negative
• “Discussions”: 1
• Bird watching, heavy metal guitarists who love Portland Oregon that man reception desks at small Icelandic folk museums : 1