Iceland: Gullfoss - "Gold Falls"

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Here's me in front of Gullfoss - The Gold Falls. These falls are HUGE! The roar was very spectacular.

The cavern was opened up first as a rift after an earthquake, then the force of the water, which comes from glacial melt water, did the rest, and opened up the crack into a fairly sizable canyon.

To say they're spectacular is an understatement!

The roar is amazing! The restricted area that the water falls into makes for a large amount of displaced air, which can be felt as a cool breeze - the glacially fed river water is VERY cold!

Back near the turn of the century, a group of "businessmen" bought the rights to build a power plant at the site from the farmer who owned the land, which included the falls. He apparently didn't realize what they were going to do... his daughter walked to Reykjavik to get a lawyer to help her stop the building of the plant.

It ended up that a clause in the contract was that if they were late on a payment, then the landowner could nullify the deal. The businessmen were late on the first payment, so they managed to get out of the deal, saving the falls.

She got a plaque at the site. She also turned over the site to the park system, which preserves the site as a national park.

Mist from the lower falls rises out of the canyon in a sheet of droplets.

It was pretty weird - it seemed to go up and down at the same time... part of it being pushed out of the canyon, and the other part falling back to earth...

There's a trail that goes to right down to the falls, which we took.

The mist falls on the trail, keeping the grass in the immediate area quite green and lush... we were glad we brought rain jackets with us in our backpacks... we needed them.

The trail took you down through the spray to an outcropping that let you stand right next to the rushing water...

... it was very mesmerizing.

The view from the outcropping was pretty incredible. You could get right down to the water's edge.

The blue-green tint of the water came from glacial silt; nearly all of the water flowing in the river was melt water from a glacier nearby

In most places, there weren't any barriers at all... just like at the hot spots... if you were dumb enough to jump in, they were going to let you.

We got pretty damp down there with the spray... but it was more than worth it!

Gullfoss left an impression that I won't soon forget...

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