Sunday, July 3, 2016

Eldhraun, Iceland: Lava field

This next natural wonder can have something of a yuck factor to it, at least in how it looks from a distance.

It's the lava field in Eldhraun, located in Southern Iceland. The LakagĂ­gar eruptions took place late in the 1700s, and had one of the biggest lava flows by a volcano since the Ice Age. (Who figures these things out anyway?) It covered something like 232 square miles.

However, the moss has had more than 200 years to settle on top of the lava. So it's all a yucky shade of green. When you visit now, you can look in both directions and see nothing but this stuff.

Naturally, you should pull the car into a parking lot at some point and take a look at this. Better yet, you should jump on it. The moss is several inches thick at this point, so it feels like you are jumping on a reasonably hard mattress.

It's an odd tourist attraction, but fascinating in its own way.

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