Iceland 2.4: Isafjordur, the Arctic Fox center, a hot spring, and a collapsed sorceror's cottage

     We decided to begin the next day by visiting and exploring part of Isafjordur.  We parked deep on the inlet and walked around a bit.  I took out my portrait lens for a spin, which I have almost no familiarity with.  We tried to find the older wooden houses reported to be in town.  We found what looked like wooden houses that were covered by aluminum.  They were very colorful.

        Toward the rear of the inlet, from the direction we original viewed it, was a long walkway with rocks built up along it and a nice view of the mountains in all directions.  There was a very interesting looking ship out there.  I decided to have Stephanie pose here for me so I could practice with the new lens.

    There were many buildings in town with graffiti art.  We spotted a raven with a bone in its mouth and started heading back to our car via the main street.  We passed what was supposed to be a "cheap" bakery, but unfortunately it was closed.  We ducked into a nearby gift shop to pick up a puffin puppet for our neighbor.

    Fifteen minutes down the road was the Arctic Fox Center.  It often housed arctic foxes in an enclosure, but they were empty at the moment.  We sat and watched a fairly long video detailing the lives of the arctic fox and what areas of Iceland it inhabits.  We received a coffee to drink.  I drank Stephanie's too.  Then there were a few rooms with pictures and information.  I bought a fox crossing patch.

    About a half hour down the road Stephanie spotted a whale out in the ocean. I caught sight of the tail coming out of the water and Stephanie reported seeing the blowhole.  A few minutes later, I spotted an arctic fox.  I pulled up along side of it, rolled down Stephanie's window, and tried to take pictures.  Unfortunately, only a single one came out decently.  I troubleshooted this incident with Jeremy and we came to the conclusion that I must have braced myself against the wheel or elsewhere in the car and the steep rumble of the engine gave me enough microshakes to mess up the pictures.

    

This is clearly not a fox.  I just like the baby black sheep.

     In the evening we arrived near the end of our day's journey, at the hotel of Laugarholl.  They had hot springs, and my muscles were in need of that.  We were asked to shower first before the springs.  Just next door was the "sorceror's cottage," a reconstruction of the way homes used to be built on Iceland, but the hotel manager informed us that snow had collapsed in the roof weeks prior.  I asked the manager if the hotel was most frequented by foreigners or people from Iceland.  She told me that prior to Covid, it was nearly all foreigners, but since Covid, that trend reversed completely and had been full all winter, for the first time, by Icelanders.  We camped in nearby Holmavik.