Day 12

Yesterday Mom and Bria picked a little container of blueberries, and put them in the refrigerator. The next morning when we got up we could smell blueberry cake in the oven! It was so good it did not take long to finish it up.

Today is the day that Dad went with us, and we were headed to Thingvellir to see the fault line from the tectonic plates in Iceland. When we got there it was sprinkling and it was cold and windy. We followed a path for a while until we reached the fault line. There were interesting little caves and plant life along the way. Here is a little information about the tectonic plates.

From a bird´s eye perspective, the Earth´s inner structure can be seen as consisting of several layers: the crust, the solid upper mantle, the viscous lower mantle, the liquid outer core and the solid inner core. The crust and the upper mantle together form the lithosphere (on average, 100 km thick); which is broken up into seven major and many minor “plates”, named tectonic plates. The lithosphere consists of continental crust and oceanic crust that surfaces in the ocean basins. Simply termed, a tectonic plate, often also referred to as lithospheric plate, is a massive slab of solid rock that floats separately from the other tectonic plates, interacting with them along the boundaries. The continents are embedded in the tectonic plates and drift inertly along. The reason that tectonic plates are able to move, despite their colossal weight, is that the two types of crust, continental and oceanic, differ significantly in composition. The continental crust is predominantly made up of granitic rocks, whilst the oceanic crust consists of higher density basaltic rocks (therefore heavier), enabling the tectonic plates to float, not unlike icebergs.

Iceland is a place where a mid-ocean ridge can be seen on land. What's more, Iceland is probably the only place in the world where the effects of two major tectonic plates drifting apart can easily be observed above sea level.

From being up at the fault line there was a great view far and wide. On the way down to the cars, we stopped to see a water fall. The land on the way back to the store to get groceries and then to get lunch at a little pizza place close by, was lots of green, yellow, red, and orange colors.

The pizza we had was delicious! We all really enjoyed it. One pizza was pepperoni, the second was arugula and ham, and the third was, just plain cheese. Mom and I loved the arugula and ham pizza the best!