Coastal Farm: The soil here must be incredible for growing crops, considering it is all volcanic in origin. Next stop, Keflavik Airport, Iceland.

VIDEO: Stewardess welcomes us to Iceland: Listen to the stewardess speaking Icelandic. Fun! (Note: In order to play this video, you need a lot of patience if using dial-up. You also need Flash.)

Touchdown: We had a one hour layover in Iceland. Unfortunately, this was not long enough to go outside of the airport, plus security was tight. We had just enough time to find the bathrooms (called "water closets"), and have a snack before boarding.

Icelandic towns amidst the water and mountains: I didn't see too many towns, after this one, as we flew over Iceland. Most of the upcoming landscape is extremely mountainous and glacier-filled. I would imagine there might be significant flooding in this area after some of the north Atlantic storms that roll through this part of the world.

Enormous Mountains: My sister once visited Iceland and said the enormity, and starkness of the landscape was absolutely overwhelming. It was one of the most incredible experiences of her life. I have got to get to this country some time. For scale, click on the picture and check out the teeny weeny houses near the bottom of the photo. Oh, how insignificant people are here.

Inhospitable Landscape: Every scene out of the airplane window was spectacular. The glaciers on the mountain tops are permanent all year round, and you will soon see some photos of very large glaciers in blog entries to come. This landscape is covered with lava flow, after lava flow. You can just imagine the magma flowing down the sides of the mountainous landscape. Breathtaking...

Mountains, glaciers, snow, and clouds: The cloud cover makes the mountains seem even taller. As it is, some of these mountains are in the 600 meter to 1200 meter range. Notice the glaciers surrounding the mountain as far as the eye can see. I believe that some of the glaciers may be in excess of 2000 feet thick.

Glacier and Mountains: This entire area is volcanic. The rock is all basalt, and it looks like it has a high iron content. Look at the leading edge of the glacier in the lower right. You can see where it is retreating in the "heat" (all 54F of it) of the summer, leaving little pools behind.

Variable Icelandic Landscape: AMAZING! Gorgeous! This view really makes me want to explore Iceland some day. The features are all so large. Volcanoes, glaciers, basalt and ash everywhere...

Close-up of Icelandic Mountains: These look rather volcanic to me! Yowzer, there are a lot of volcanoes in Iceland. It almost looks like an alien landscape. Beautiful...(Click on the image...go on...I know you can't resist!)