Our tour leaders spent dinner studying aurora and cloud cover projections and decided our best bet was to drive south to the little hamlet of Vogar and observe the sky from the Kálfatjarnarkirkja church parking lot.

It worked! We could see a faint aurora almost as soon as we got off the bus; it got brighter but then clouds moved in…and it started to drizzle, so we all got back on the bus to wait it out.

Five minutes later, we got off the bus and had a brighter aurora to enjoy.

I need to spend some time practicing with my tripod, phone, mount, and camera before the next session – I took some terrific closeup pictures of the parking lot before I wised up!

Today, our group took the Golden Circle excursion with stops at Thingvellir National Park, Geysir, Gullfoss, and the Hellisheiði Geothermal Power Station. In a few minutes, we’ll be off for another round of aurora hunting (two hours of driving, one hour of hunting), and we have to leave very early tomorrow for our journey on the Ring Road to Akureyri, six hours away, so I won’t have the time to lovingly edit and annotate today’s blog entry. Instead, here are a few photos to provide a flavor of the day.