When I first began wandering the globe there was a running joke among the seasoned travelers I met. Wherever they went it seemed the locals always said the same thing, “You guys really missed it. You should have been here yesterday.” When I arrived in Iceland on what was billed as a “Northern Lights Photo Tour” I was reminded that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Hólt, our tour guide, said she was confident that we would see the Northern Lights while in Iceland but we had to understand that it was a natural phenomenon and there were no guarantees. It was unfortunate that we arrived when we did because the week before had seen spectacular displays in the local skies. It didn’t help that several of the English members of our group were receiving emails and phone calls from friends and family about the amazing lights in the skies of England. Hólt would monitor several weather web sites which provided daily odds on seeing the Northern Lights over Iceland. Most days the odds were not good. That night we would not have to worry about the Northern Lights since there was heavy cloud cover. This is Stykkishólmur from the Súgandisey lighthouse.