Day 14 - It's not a crash, just a very hard unplanned landing it a place that's not intended for it
Today was another long trip, mainly because I made it that. Without any detours and stops the journey from Hella to Grindavik only takes one hour 40 minutes. For activities I had two options. Either going a bit off my planned route to visit Haifoss, another waterfall or to track back a little bit along Route 1 and visit a spot that I skipped yesterday, because it was raining heavily.
The first option would have increased the trip time to 4,5 hours (quite a bit out of the way) while the second option, that I took, made for a total travel time of 3,5 hours (not as bad as the first but the way there brought me back past Seljalandsfoss and Skogarfoss, both visible from the road).
The trip lead me to a rather eerie place (even more so at this time of year when the place is not swarming with tourists).
This is the crash site of an old Super DC-3 airplane of the US Navy, that came down in November of 1973 (being already old when it crashed as construction of these started in 1949). The whole crew of five survived uninjured and was rescued by helicopter about an hourer after the crash.
As the Navy decided that salvage of the wrack was too costly (this was before the Ring Road was completed in this area, putting it squarely in the middle of nowhere), they removed the engines and all equipment on board and left the empty husk sitting on the sand.
The surrounding area is an outwash basin, where melting water from the near-by glacier flows into the sea. The whole basin is covered in dark sand and fine gravel , produced by erosion of volcanic rocks.
From there I continued my trip, this time into the right direction, which eventually brought me to another spot I had missed the day before. The one volcano that managed to piss off a good part of the western world in 2010, Eyjafjallajökull (any other names with four L, three J and three A in 16 letters?).
If it wasn't for this continent-size smoking break eight years ago, not many people would look twice at this mountain and glacier (unless you're a glaciologist or geologist).
After this short stop I drove on, right past the hotel, that I had set off from in the morning and on my final overnigh stay in Grindavik.
This may be the last entry that I write in Iceland and in the regular interval. Depending on my mood, the avaliability of power and wifi at the airport, and whether I find a nice place to write, I might do the summary and final remarks on this journey either tomorrow or when I am back in Austria.