Captain’s log: Objective obscured by low clouds. Rain starting. Morale falling. Pulled back to reorganize. Issued one and a half rations to party to boost morale.

Distances in the Westfjords are not particularly vast, but they might as well be. Between roads being fitted in around fjords and some roads being in part or whole made of dirt, it takes a long time to get anywhere. For instance, it is an hour from our hotel to the nearest town, which is about fifteen miles as the crow (or puffin) flies. Just to get from the hotel to a paved road takes forty minutes.

All of this is relevant to what I wanted to see today, and what was my primary reason for coming to the Westfjords – the giant bridal veil falls of Dynjandi. It is located on the only road connecting the southern part of the Westfjords to the northern part. And it is gravel for fifty-plus miles of the way. And when we woke up today, there was a light but steady rain. Which, when mixed with gravel, does an impressive job of turning a, say, yellow car into a brown car.

Dynjandi is about eighty miles from our hotel, but it took us almost three hours to get there. We did detour thirty minutes into the town of Patreksfjordur to fill up on gas, just to be safe. We probably had enough gas (a half tank), but you really don’t want to risk running out of gas in an entire region that, as Mer pointed out after looking at a local map, has more public swimming pools (seventeen) than gas stations (eleven).

The drive was an Icelandic version of Brigajoondur – we quickly drove up into a cloudy mist, from which things would emerge and then disappear. A few places had mist so dense I could only see far enough ahead to see one set of yellow road markers on the side of the road, which are not that far apart. Then the mist would part, and we would see snow-dappled mountains or a dramatic valley view, and then we’d be in mist again.

Making it to Dynjandi, we discovered that the several lower falls were clear, but Dynjandi itself was about half shrouded in mist. We decided to hike up to it anyway, since we had come all this way, and we’d had good luck previously with rain or clouds clearing up when we got to a sight. We climbed as high as the third smaller fall (about a quarter of the way up) when a light rain started to fall. Also, our friends the Icelandic midges were back in force. So we retreated back to the car to eat our emergency stash of Snickers, to plan, and to (hopefully) wait out the rain.

After about fifteen minutes, we thought the rain was lightening up, so we got out and got geared up – hats for rain, and netting for our faces if needed for the midges. We started our hike up the path again, and the rain stopped, and Dynjandi started to appear out of the mist. What a sight! It was huge and wide and multilayered and spread across a vast amount of rock face. There were a few people up near the falls, and the perspective their scale gave to the scene was almost dizzying. As we climbed, Meredith put on her white netting, calling it her bridal veil for the bridal veil falls. The midges were thick, but I resisted cranking up my personal nerd space with a face netting until I was halfway down. When we did eventually reach the top of the trail, at the base of Dynjandi, the wind and spray from the falls kept any midges away.

What a joy to hike the falls trail – some of the lower-down falls we thought were small turned out to be fairly big, but had been obscured by rock faces when seen from down lower. The higher we climbed, the more we could also turn around and admire the fjord that was now clearing out of the mist.

But, no question, Dynjandi stole the show. Even with the mist and the breeze and the roar of the water, we spent about half an hour up near the falls, just trying to drink it all in. As we started to climb down, the mist crept back in, making the falls hard to see. We felt as if we had been lucky to see what we had seen, but when we got about halfway down, the sun started to burn away the mist, and the falls came splendidly back into view. Even once we were back in the car, we sat watching the falls for a few minutes before heading back over the pass to go back south. Dynjandi had been my major motivation for coming to this part of Iceland, and not even a two-to-three-hour drive lessened my awe of the falls.

The drive back seemed to go much more quickly, which is often the way, in my experience. The weather was better, so we had better views of the sights around us; Meredith had grand views, since she could look around. I was more focused on staying on the road and avoiding the occasional oncoming cars.

We headed back toward the hotel on the Latrabjarg peninsula area, but I detoured south down a (of course) gravel road to go to a large sand beach named Raudisandur. It was supposed to be huge and covered in brown sand, which is rare in Iceland. The drive didn’t seem too bad, but then we hit some true switchbacks up and down the pass, with a few please-don’t-let-there-be-another-car-coming places. We made it safely, and I admit to being a little disappointed in the beach itself. The area where we were was covered in many places by shallow pools, even though it was low tide. That made walking the beach a less inviting proposition. But the surrounding cliffs were amazing, and there was a black church near the beach, and the churchyard was open. So we poked around, looking at gravestones. I had forgotten that Icelanders are so-and-so’s son or so-and-so’s daughter as a last name (so Matthew Peterson or Meredith Dalesdaughter), even for married couples. Most of the tombstones listed where the person was from as well. It was a peaceful spot. But, as it looked as if clouds were forming around the mountain, I decided we should leave so I wouldn’t have extra trouble on the road out. It did start raining lightly on the way up, but in that odd Icelandic way, by the time we got down and just a few miles along toward our hotel, the sun finally came fully out, for the first time since we have been in Iceland. What a glorious sight it was to see all the fjords lit up brilliantly.

We ate supper at the hotel, before heading out on the gravel road down the rest of the peninsula, to get to the Latrabjarg cliffs, which is a series of cliffs that are the nesting ground to about one million birds. We were going to go last night, but the weather was bad, so we delayed it until today. A couple who had gone last night had shown us their puffin bird pictures at breakfast this morning, so although the couple had gotten soaked, they had gotten very close to the puffins.

In comparison, we felt a little smug going to the cliffs tonight, with our expanse of sunlight. But it seems that puffins like rain more than wind. When we got to the cliffs, there was a strong wind we had not had anywhere else during the day. The sun was out, but there were no birds on the ground. There were many in the air, and, if we could judge from the photographers too close to the cliff edge, there were many on the cliffs. However, we didn’t get to see any puffins up close. But it was a beautiful place to walk, until the path got too close the the cliff edge. Then my fear of heights kicked in, and I left Meredith to continue on while I beat a discretionary path back to the car. Mer met me there about fifteen minutes later, and we came back to our room. We threw open our window, which looks directly out to the ocean over a couple hundred yards of grass. We can hear the surf crashing on shore as cool air drifts in. Sometimes the sun does come out, but even so, the morale-boosting rations are still tasty.

Who could have predicted that a place called the Westfjords would have many, many fjords? And that driving around many, many fjords takes many, many hours? Someone should really warn me about these things, but I get ahead of myself.

We left Snaefellsnes Peninsula this morning in a typical way for our two days there – right where we were staying and parked was dry, but on both sides of the town, you could see rain bands. It had the happy effect of throwing a rainbow across the iconic mountian Kirkjufell, which we could see from our room and as we loaded the car. The trip out involved going the same way we came in, over a mountain pass. The views were better today, but the top was still rainy and cloud-bound.

We had a choice on how to go out of the peninsula – we could take the dirt road due east, or drive south on the paved road back to Borgarnes before turning north again to head to our destination of the day, the remote Westfjords region. We decided to play it safe, and we took the paved way, even though it may have added thirty minutes or more to our trip. Dirt roads in Iceland can be anything from great and fast to rutted and slow. We knew we had plenty of dirt roads ahead, so we took the road more traveled. It also allowed us to eat at the bakery in Borgarnes one more time, so that was a bonus.

We both had decided to go to the Westfjords independently during the planning process. Mer wanted to go because Rick Steves covers it and it sounded wild and far-flung, and I saw it on a map and thought, “That looks cool!” When I found out there was a major waterfall overlooking a fjord in the area, I was sold.

The thing about being far-flung is that it takes time to get there, sort of. It is no problem getting to the edge of the Westfjords. It is getting into them that takes time. If you skip the ferry, which we did since it wasn’t leaving until 3:00 pm, then you have to take the one road in, Route 60. Route 60 weaves in and out of eight different fjords and over several mountains, and has the exciting bonus of being a dirt road for about twenty miles. Iceland, being a manly country, doesn’t usually believe in guardrails over silly things like steep drops into fjords, so it makes for some…interesting…driving. When there ARE guardrails, worry.

We got past the eight fjords, and, tired of the boring paved road, Meredith had me turn to stay on Route 60, which again became a dirt road, this time with the added bonus of being under construction. Once past the construction, we turned down, or rather, up and down, Route 63, which was a dirt road in and out of fjords and over mountains, but with the level-up challenge of usually being less than two lanes wide. Natives in four-by-fours do like to keep as close to the 80 kph (48 mph) speed limit as they can on these roads, so I was paying more attention to the driving than to the astonishing scenery around me. I was impressed and moved by whatever happened to flash in front of me, except when the road commanded all of my attention. Meredith loved the drive for the scenery.

The result of all of this out-of-the-way driving was that we stopped in a small parking lot next to three small buildings and an outdoor pool that overlooked the mountains and a fjord. The property had a natural hot spring, and the soak-loving Icelanders had built a pool that was free to use. You didn’t even have to shower before using it. We changed and got into the pool, which was about the temperature of warm bathwater. You wanted to keep as much of your body submerged as possible, as the winds were blowing and were cold, but that added to the experience. We soaked in the water and the scenery as well for some time. There was also the natural spring itself about a hundred yards up the hill, so we went to sit in that, despite getting chilled some from the wind in the process of walking there.

It was worth it – the natural pool was sandy and really hot, much hotter than the swimming pool. There were two women soaking their feet there, and as we got in, a man and woman came up to soak their feet as well. The two women were from Germany and were at the tail end of their trip, and the man and woman were originally from India, but now living in San Francisco, and were at the end of their trip. We sat around and swapped stories, all while enjoying the hot pool. When we all got up to leave, Meredith and I took another dip in the pool to rinse off any sand, and we dried off and changed back into our clothes.

We drove on very pretty roads, which shorty turned back to paved, all the way to the small town of Patreksfjordur. We had looked into staying there while planning the trip, but everything was booked. So we went on around another fjord, along Route 612 west (unpaved), until we got to our hotel. By then, I was very weary and hungry. In addition to the to the road conditions, it had started to rain lightly. I was relieved to get out of the car.

The hotel is surprisingly big, with an annex and a small campground. Only about four or five miles away is the westernmost point of Europe, which also happens to be a puffin breading ground. We have been told these puffins are pretty fearless, letting people get to within a few feet of them. My guess is the hotel is here to cater to bird watchers. We were going to go out to see the puffins tonight, but the weather is poor and is forecast to clear by tomorrow evening, so we delayed the trip. We had an excellent supper and got settled in our own nest for the evening.

Matt decides to outsmart Iceland and puts on the spandex shirt he brought as an underlayer. THAT will keep Matt warm. Iceland turns down the heat….

The day ultimately ended up being good, weather-wise, but the morning was windy, cold, raw, and in some places rainy. The first two stops we made were really cold, seeps-inside-you cold. And I was wearing five layers. In July. After the second stop, the day started to warm up, and the winds dropped down to more normal, so we were fine, but I originally thought we were in for a long day.

Which was my day to be in charge. We took our time getting ready this morning and had a long breakfast because we were waiting for the local supermarket to open at 9:00 to see if they had a SIM card for a phone and a box of tissues. In an Icelandic town of 900 people, think less supermarket and more large convenience store. They didn’t have a SIM card; no surprise. They also didn’t have tissues. We thought maybe the attached pharmacy might have tissues, but they didn’t open until noon. We decided to make do with a roll of toilet paper we snagged from our room.

My days tend to be a mixture of planned sightseeing and “where does this road go?” whimsical moments. Our first stop was whimsical – a pull-off on a high point of the road going west. The views of the next town and surrounding countryside were great, but it was the first of our two really cold stops. The second was a somewhat-planned stop in that I had seen it online and filed it away. When I saw the pretty red church situated in a mountain-surrounded field, I knew I wanted to stop.

So I turned down the dirt road to go it. The car was immediately dive-bombed by an arctic tern; they get aggressive during mating season. I bumped along with the road getting rougher, and I decided this couldn’t be right. I stopped and asked a man who was taking pictures of wildflowers how to get to the church. He said it was the next road. The tern dive-bombed us again on the return drive.

The church was worth a stop. There were good views in all directions, even with the low-lying clouds covering the tops of mountains and, sadly for us, the nearby glacier. All day long, we would get small glimpses of the glacier, but never the whole thing. We started calling this phenomenon “The Dance of the Seven Clouds.” Anyway, we took our time and some pictures at the church, which was the last really cold stop of the day.

I had wanted to see a small (by Iceland standards) waterfall named Svodufoss. It is “only” 35 feet tall, but is situated well with the glacier above it and mountains around. Iceland seems to be stepping up both the environmental as well as the tourism game by installing plastic pavement grids filled with crushed stone to serve as paths for visitors. That makes hikes dry and easy, and protects the fragile plant life next to the paths. The locals had installed one of these at Svodufoss, as well as a stone wall/bench area with a stone patio that allowed us to sit and watch the falls, which we did for about ten minutes.

We made a snack/pit stop at the cute cafe we had eaten at yesterday, and then went back into the Snaefellsjokull National Park on the western part of the peninsula. We went down a one-track paved road that became an okay dirt road that became a rough dirt road. At the end of the road, separated by a mile or so, are two colorfully orange-painted lighthouses. Both are surrounded by lava fields, but the first one we went to is about thirty feet tall and has the mountains as a backdrop. I really liked that one. The second lighthouse is pint-sized, being maybe ten feet tall, and on the edge of a grassy area. In the middle of the grassy area is the area’s only freshwater well, which locals used to believe was a mixture of water, holy water, and ale. The well is still accessible for anyone who is interested, but bring a cell phone or flashlight – it’s dark in the mound built over it. The coast at this lighthouse lets you look back east over the rest of the peninsula, which was impressive today as the waves were crashing all along the coast as far as we could see.

A return bumpy trip got us back to the parking lot at the head of the one-lane road, where we parked to see Skardsvik Beach, a rare brown sand beach in Iceland. Most of the beaches are made of black pebbles or sand. I’m not sure where the brown sand came from, but we strolled around the small beach and loved how it was framed by black lava all around.

The day before, Meredith had been in charge and had taken us to the southern part of the peninsula, where we zoomed by two huge sea stacks without stopping. I clearly needed to fix that today, so we stopped by the Gestastofa Visitors Center, which is near the sea stacks and overlooks them (and you can hike to them as well). We used the free bathrooms (no joke in Iceland, where facilities are few and far between), and then walked over to the black lava cliff overlooking the sea (but not the stacks, which are in another direction). Again, we were impressed at the power of the waves crashing into the rocks. We then did walk most of the way out to the sea stacks, but stopped short of them, as we could see them better from a small distance.

We didn’t go far, however. About a mile down the road from the visitors’ center was a cliff overlook that was built (the overlook, not the cliffs) to see the stacks, but also had great views of the nesting seabirds on the cliffs below. It was a great stop; plus, as a bonus, the sun had come out some, so we could shed layers. The glacier was still stubbornly hiding under clouds, but we were warm (I think it was 52 degrees out, according to my car).

I was very proud of Meredith at my last stop for the day. We pulled into the parking lot for the Raudfeldsgja Gorge, and we started the climb up to the gorge entrance, which is a good little hike. The surrounding cliffs and mountains and ocean views were spectacular, so rest stops were never a bad thing. But, once we got to the mouth of the gorge, we found that it was only a few feet wide, all of which were taken up by a shallow stream. And Meredith actually waded it in her new Gore-Tex hiking shoes. I don’t take that for granted. We got into a roofless antechamber of sorts where there was some dry land, but that ended quickly. I scouted ahead to see how hard the hike was, and I turned around when I saw that it involved scrambling up small waterfalls. In the process of my turning around, the water came over the back of my right shoe. Ooops.

We hiked back down and then took the same mountain pass we took yesterday. The top was still covered in clouds, but the views going up were enjoyed by Meredith (who could look around) and by both of us on the way down (when the views were in front of us). We went back to the guesthouse, ate a quick supper, and then took advantage of the lack of rain to walk down to the small harbor of the town so I could see the mountains loom over the harbor and fishing boats.

There are several things to do and places to see here that I would love to have fit in, but they will have to wait. One of the great things about travel is how there is always more to do than time to fit it in, so you always have a reason to come back. That, and sometimes when you are really cold, the sun comes out and the touring goes on.

“Ah, you silly Americans!” says Iceland in good English with a cute accent. “You think you got some wind yesterday? Ha! I’ll show you wind!” And so Iceland did. I have never felt sustained winds like those we encountered today. We know for sure (based on weather data) that one place we were had sustained winds of 38 mph. We’re pretty sure that on top of a volcanic crater in the middle of a lava plain facing the ocean, we must have had sustained winds of 50 mph. It totally messed with my windblown hair.

But I get ahead of myself. We got to the Snaefellsness Peninsula early, and headed to the northeast part of the area (the land overall juts into the ocean into the west, so this was the “upper right” part). We were again amazed at Iceland weather. Everyone not in California or Florida always says, “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” These people have not been to Iceland. Coming from the south, in the space of about fifty miles, we had areas of misting rain, clearing, real rain, clearing, and misting rain again. We came over a mountain pass to get to the northeast, and we pulled over at a viewpoint to enjoy the view and to eat some brownies we had brought from the bakery in Borgarnes. When we got there, it was cloudy with patches of sun, but very windy. Then it clouded over. Then it started to mist and we got back in the car. Then it rained hard. I think we were stopped for less than ten minutes. When we drove away, we drove out of the rain within three or four miles. The end result of the constantly changing weather was that we decided just to tour and assume things would work out. Generally, they did, with any rain we encountered usually stopping after a few minutes of our arriving at a place we wanted to see.

Back to the northeast part of the peninsula. We pulled off on a side road at a sign proclaiming “The Shark Museum,” a museum showing how shark is caught and processed, and offering a taste of shark to tourists. But we were there about thirty minutes early, so I took the opportunity to drive a small dirt ring road along the ocean. It was sunny, but there was mist blowing in from the mountains, so we saw the brightest and closest (and full) rainbow either of us had ever seen. We saw multiple rainbows today, but this early one was spectacular.

We got to the museum a little after 10:00, and it was very much a family affair. The museum itself was one large room with family artifacts and a short video showing how they process shark. The same family has been catching Greenland sharks since about 1600. The sharks used to be caught for their liver oil (a Greenland shark liver weighs about 300 pounds), but the meat made people ill, until they buried it for six weeks and then dried it. I can imagine how that went:

“Gunnar! Every time I eat shark it makes me sick!”
“I know, Einar! It is too bad. We have so much meat.”
“Gunnar! If it makes me sick when it is fresh, maybe it will be okay to eat if I bury it in the ground for six weeks!”
“Einar! You are a genius! But, to be safe, after you dig it up from the ground, you should hang it in the air for three months, and then try eating it.”

Obviously, this is fictional. The original conversation would have been in Icelandic.

The motherly figure showing us around was very friendly, and when she got to the tasting, she acted as if of course we wanted some shark. Because she was so nice, and because it would shame Meredith into eating some, I actually tried a small piece. It was, technically speaking, not good. I saw a “tourist reaction” sheet at the door that showed the touristic stages of trying shark, and it ended with, “What in the name of all that is holy and good is that taste?” I agree with that sentiment.

Meredith thought it was okay.

After a quick photo stop of the small church on the farm, we headed along the main road going west, until we got to our first major waterfall on the peninsula, Grundarfoss. Grundarfoss is a large waterfall cascading 200 feet off of a mountain, with a dramatic ridge framing one side. You can walk up fairly close to the falls through a sheep pasture, with a walk of about three quarters of a mile. That involved jumping a small creek. Happily, at that point, we were committed, so Meredith successfully tried the leap. The rain let up as we got to the falls, and the wind died down considerably, so we spent a good ten minutes there looking around. As Meredith likes to say, Iceland is a 360-degree country:  there are views in all directions. As we wandered out, the wind and rain came back, so we were happy to get back to the car and the heated seats. I’ve not before given thought to wind chill temperatures in July, but I have now. For those curious, 50 degrees with 35 mph winds feels like 41, which I think feels even colder when you get wet.

We drove the short distance to the town of Grundarfjorthur, where we would be staying the next two nights. No one was in at our hotel; we’ve been worried at the increase in numbers of places that have check-in via a “call us” number posted, especially since the cell phone we keep in our car is a U.S.-only plan – it doesn’t work in Iceland, so that may make things harder as we go along. For now, we moved on out of town to a highly visited falls/mountain combination – Kirkjufell (the mountain) and Kirkjufellfoss (the falls).

You can hike out to the falls from a parking lot, and get a picture of the falls and a dramatic stand-alone mountain in the same shot. It is on tons of post cards, and has been used (so Meredith tells me via Rick Steves) in the Game of Thrones TV series. It is easy to see why – even in the on-again, off-again mist we were in, it was a beautiful spot. There were mountains around, the falls, the lone mountain, the town spread out, and the ocean.

After lunch at a very cute café on down the road, we continued our whirl-windy tour by stopping at the Saxholl volcanic crater. Saxholl is a fairly small mountain at 300 feet, but it towers above the lava plains around it, and is open to the sea. There are also stairs that let you climb to the top. So up we went, even in the ever increasing wind. It was a fairly happening place, with a dozen or so cars in the lot. We met some people coming down, so when we got to the wind-tunnel top, there were about eight of us up there. We were all laughing at having to brace against strong wind gusts above the normal gale. It was indeed a bracing experience. The views were grand, but there was something about feeling the power of nature on top of a former power of nature that made us a little giddy.

On to another volcanic crater, but a less active one for us. The Holaholar Crater is one you can actually drive into. There are no views of the surrounding country, but the road takes you to a spot that creates a wonderful frame of the mountains as backdrop outside the crater.

Djupalonssandur, a black sand beach, was next on the list. A surprisingly full parking lot was at the end of a mile-long single-track road. I knew from the crowds and the first collection of sight-attached free bathrooms that we were somewhere important to the local economy. A dramatic path led down through a lava field to a beach of black lava pebbles and sand. The crashing surf was wrapped on each side by huge rock formations and cliffs. It was raining steadily as we walked down to the beach, but let up after a couple of minutes down there. We lingered for ten minutes or so, and went back on another path. Before we went back to the car, we climbed a boardwalk to the top of an observation platform on a hill overlooking the beach for a grand view of where we had been.

You may think this sounds like a full day, and it was, but Meredith was in charge, so we had another stop. After a quick stop at a commemorative statue to a local woman whom the sagas say traveled as far as North America (where she gave birth to a child) and to Rome, we finished the day at Arnarstapi. Arnarstapi is a small collection of buildings near a very small harbor, but it boasts some great boardwalk walks along the edges of cliffs where arctic terns nest and where you get grand views of rock formations. We walked the boardwalks, and Meredith decided we could take the cliff walk to the small village of Hellnar. Rick Steves recommended it, and it started out on an easy path. That gave way at the lava field to a rough path of fist-sized stones. Add in some drizzle and rain and wind, and the walk was tough at times. It all cleared up at the far end, and the sun even came out a little for the return walk, which seemed much shorter. Happily, Iceland threw in some more drizzle right at the end so that we would appreciate our car’s heated seats.

We came back to town over another mountain pass, but this one was cloud/mist-bound, so we didn’t see to much. Our hotel was still locked and unstaffed, but a kind woman at a restaurant let us use her cell phone, so we got checked in okay. Some food at 8:00 pm helped shore up morale.

It was a long but good day. Touring around is wonderful and beautiful, but it ain’t no breeze.

Today we got introduced to three Icelandic things that we will almost certainly experience again on this trip – wind, water, and wings (in the form of midges). But don’t let the wild words worry you with waning willpower; we didn’t.

We started the day off with a lovely drive to the northeast to a rural area that features the most powerful hot spring in Europe, named Deildartunguhver. Easy for me to say. You can know in your head that hot spots in the Earth’s crust exist, and you can know the heat from those spots can heat water, but it is a mighty thing to stand in front of a hot spring where water is literally boiling and steaming out of the ground to form pools that would scald you. Deildartunguhver supplies the town of Borgarnes with all of its hot water, and happily for me and Meredith, someone built a beautiful spa on the grounds to take advantage of the spring.

We visited the hot springs (which is wisely fenced off and posted with warning signs) and stood in the clouds of steam issuing up from the spring. We would be cool one second (standing in the fifty-five degree air), and then in one step, we were standing in warm steam. Just a couple of feet made a drastic difference. We scouted out the spa area; the hot pools are outside and visible from the walkway, but we were there about forty minutes before they opened, so we took a chance to explore.

We went back to a roadside sign I had seen, and it turned out to explain about the area we were in, with a map as well. We walked across the street to a dirt road to look at a very involved road map, and I decided to take a picture of Meredith with the mountains in the background. I stepped back onto the dirt road to take the photo – no big deal. A dirt road off of a tar road that would see one car every five minutes. So, of course, as I took the picture, a car turned off the tar road onto the dirt road. We got back in the car to go look at a church marked on the map, seeing a John Deere tractor along the way being driven by a mom with her son in the cab with her. The church was very small, and in a beautiful location, but the gate was closed and tied off, so we headed back to the spa.

Krauma Spa is quite wonderful. It feels upscale and is small, capping visitors at 130 people at any one time. We got there at 11:00 am when they opened, and for most of our visit, there were only about a dozen people (and only six of us altogether for the first half hour). Icelandic custom is to shower before going into pools, even ones heated by water from the ground, so we did that before heading out to the pools. Krauma has five hot pools that range in temperature from 98 to 106 degrees, as well as two steam rooms, a cold pool, and a relaxation room.

We started in the coolest pool of the hot pools, where we spent a long time talking with a couple from Denver. It lightly rained some, but that was fine by us in a hot pool. We then tried the second pool, where I discovered that the pool was designed as an inverted cone, presumably so you could lie down on the incline, which we happily did. The third pool was quite large, and had the best view of the mountains. The overflow from the pool fed the small stream that ran next to the walkway up to the building, with the water going back to the hot spring. I joined Meredith briefly in the hottest pool which we went to out of order, by mistake. Meredith wanted to get the full experience, so she went to the last pool while I went to check out the relaxation room.

Which was wonderful. It was a room with ten lounge chairs in it, circling a stand-alone woodstove, while calming music was piped in. The room smelled just a little of the wood being used for the fire, and a wall of windows looked out over the mountains. I settled in, and almost fell asleep. Meredith came in to tell me she wanted to try the steam room and the cold pool. She was back very shortly after discovering it was difficult to breathe in a steam room (one of my complaints about them) and difficult to stay for more than a few seconds in a pool of 45-degree water. She joined me in the relaxation room, which got even better when I quietly ordered a hot chocolate from a staff member who came to check on the fire. It was a wonderful experience. We did hear the wind howling outside the windows, but that only made the room cozier.

So wonderful, in fact, that when we went to shower and change back into our clothes, we discovered we had been there two and a half hours soaking and relaxing. By the time we got ready to leave, it was 2:00. Not a bad start to a touring day.

Back to the car and on to sight seeing. We headed a little more northeast, to the first two of the many waterfalls we hope to see in Iceland, and it was a good introduction to the amazing power of water in the country. A large parking lot and a useful cafe were at the head of a very short trail to Hraunfossar (“Lava Falls”), which was magical. It reminded me of Plitvice Lakes in Croatia – a long series of bridal veil falls emptying into a strong river below. The water comes from groundwater sinking through lava fields in the area, as well as water runoff from a nearby glacier. The water seems to come right out of the side of a steep bank, and goes on for about half a mile. The path takes you to several vantage points and over a bridge to the far side for more views.

Just upstream from Hraunfossar is Barnafoss (“Children’s Fall” – named for the legendary story of two children falling in on Christmas day while mom was at Mass). Barnafoss is a typical waterfall, but a powerful one cutting a channel through the igneous rock of the area. It is also full of mud or gravel, so looks churned up. The waterfall is very loud, and has cut the rocks into interesting shapes.

The only slight downside was the midges in the area. Meredith had read about midges in Iceland, but only in relation to a lake in the north. The bugs don’t seem to want to bite, but they do love to crowd up around your face and ears in large numbers. In places where the wind was blowing, we were fine, but in sheltered areas, they could drive you crazy. We did bring mosquito netting along for our heads, so that will go into the backpack from now on.

We headed back to Borgarnes, but happily took a different way back after a wrong turn (on a circular loop). The views were incredible – the sun was peeking through the clouds in various places, sometimes showing off the snow on a few mountains, and sometimes shining on bare rock. It made those objects pop out against the grey clouds. We also found a very pretty river in a valley area when we stopped to check out the menu for a restaurant (“Rock and Troll”). The restaurant was closed, but the short visit was worth the delay.

Back in town, we parked the car and walked (and were blown by the wind) to the Settlement Center, which is small museum that tells the story of the first sixty years of settlement in Iceland (from about 900-950 AD). I had thought that all of the sagas being referred to around the area were just tales, but there are books of settlement from early on. I’m sure some legendary aspects had crept in (like the idea that huge animals and giants defended Iceland from a Danish magician spy who had taken the form of a whale), but the epics pass on a lot of information about who was in Iceland and where. By the time the Icelandic Commonwealth was formed (about 950), there were an estimated 34,000 people living here. The museum also explored how the Vikings were such great sailors (they were the first to make a boat with a continuous keel for strength), as well as admitting we don’t know exactly how they navigated the open oceans in pre-compass days. The museum only took about thirty minutes to get through, but it helped me to understand how important the epic sagas are to the island’s history.

We walked back along the long trail to the hostel, and grabbed a cheap supper from a nearby grocery store. We may not have much history in Iceland yet, but today was pretty epic.

For the first time since November of 2019, we’re back on foreign soil! A deep gratitude to God and many thanks to the medical researchers, policy makers, and common people’s best efforts to get us to this point. Thank you, all!

It took a little time to clear customs and get our rental car at the airport, but by about 8:30, we were underway in our yellow Kia. It is almost brand new, and has a million features even my 2015 car doesn’t have – hybrid engine, push start, automatic lights, automatic washers, lane detectors, and many other things I don’t even know about. Renting a car is series of happy accidents with controls for some time.

We drove about an hour and forty-five minutes north to the small town of Borgarnes. We certainly got a taste of traveling in Iceland – we drove from mist to rain to mist to rain to cloudy (which was a happy progression for landing in a town we wanted to tour). We also traversed lava fields, green pastures, the outskirts of Reykjavik, drove under a fjord in a three-mile tunnel, and were dwarfed by roadside mountains. This is going to be fun (not to mention beautiful).

We got to Borgarnes about 10:00 in the morning, so our room wasn’t going to be ready. We ate a light meal in a bakery that overlooked the mountains and a fjord, and so that was a good use of time. Meredith always leans on Rick Steves for her touring wisdom, and Rick does cover Iceland. So we followed Rick’s introductory walk around town, seeing a small park, the heated town pool, the surprisingly excellent track and field area, a hill commemorating parts of an Icelandic saga (a son’s nurse was hit by a rock and drowned by a cranky father, which made his son retaliate by killing a servant of the dad – strange tales), and a small island, and finished by walking a path along the fjord back to the athletics fields. That got us to noon, and our room was ready, which allowed us to take a long nap until 4:00.

After showering and eating at a local restaurant (where I saw horse on the menu for the first time; I got beef), we jumped in the car and headed off through incredible countryside for about thirty minutes, until we got to Grabrok Crater, a very small extinct volcano. The area is still very rugged since the volcano erupted only about three thousand years ago, but the locals installed a boardwalk with steps all the way to the top. The views of the surrounding countryside kept changing as we climbed, and the views from the top were photogenic. Meredith is very patient with my “Wait! Stop!” moments of reaching for the camera. There is a path all around the lip of the crater, and we took our time strolling along it. The evening was pleasant, and the weather was very good.

Grabrok Crater was the only touristic goal of the day. We took the car back to Borgarnes and settled in for a fairly early evening. We indeed have many things to be thankful for.

We started this morning by driving back to Hershey from where we stayed in Harrisburg. We wanted to visit the Hershey Botanical Gardens. We drove back to Chocolate World, figuring we would see signs to the gardens, but we somehow missed them. We asked the teenage male worker at the gate where the botanical gardens were, and he looked confused. “Motanic gardens?” he asked. “I’ve never heard of those.

After we briefly checked out Chocolate World to see if it was still crazy at 9:45 am (it was), we plugged the word “garden” into the GPS. It was six tenths of a mile away, next to the luxury Hershey hotel. Away we went.

Meredith and I are members of Akron’s Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, and as such, we get in free to many gardens around the country. Hershey’s is one of those, so we were allowed in. We started with the butterfly house, which has something like four hundred butterflies in it. I love butterfly houses – they are magical. We got to see butterflies eating up close, using their really long proboscis, which they store by rolling up into a small coil in front of their faces. There were all-black ones and violet ones and orange ones, as well as others. They had one called a Luna moth that was imprisoned in a mesh cage because it seems it lays its eggs all over. Oddly, in its moth stage, it has no mouth or way to eat, so I guess it must eat a ton as a caterpillar.

We roamed out to the garden proper. It started as a rose garden, and the roses are still spectacular. They have added a Japanese garden, a rock garden, and an arboretum, as well as other flower gardens. The entire space is about twenty-three acres, so it is a manageable size. We were able to tour the entire park in about two hours. We still had time, so we went and ogled the Hershey Hotel. It is lovely, with multiple balconies and an interior enclosed fake courtyard. My guess is the rooms cost more than the $125 we spent on our hotel in Harrisburg.

We got on the road around 1:00 after trying to find somewhere to eat that didn’t have a thirty-minute wait. We figured we could eat on the road at a less busy time (2:30, as it turned out). We got to Newark with no issues and little traffic, and had a few confusing moments along the way involving parking, and then checking bags/getting boarding passes (why they have international passengers use a kiosk is beyond me – the kiosk always asks us to get an agent). In the end, though, we got to out gate about three and a half hours before takeoff, which was pretty good for an airport we have never used.

Lord willing and everything goes smoothly, the next stop will be Iceland!

After our last summer’s planned trip to Sweden was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic, we kept an eye on which, if any, European countries would open up first. That turned out to be Iceland, so that became our summer of 2021 trip. We booked the trip in July with the hope that more people would get vaccinated, and that would help open things up more, which actually happened – we don’t need to quarantine in Iceland at all now, which is a great thing.

But, out usual plan of flying out of Toronto wouldn’t work this time since the Canadian border has remained closed. So, we found cheap tickets out of Newark, which is seven hours away from Cuyahoga Falls. Since we have never flown out of Newark before, Meredith thought it wise that we should get part of the way there a day before, and so we settled on getting to the Harrisburg/Hershey Pennsylvania area today (Friday). We’ll fly out tomorrow, but we are only two-and-a-half hours away from the airport. We’ll still leave two hours of traffic time as well.

All of which to say, we got to tour Hershey today, going to Chocolate World. I’ve been on the factory tour of a local chocolate company in Ohio, so I thought this would be the same thing, but a little bigger and slicker. I was quite wrong. The Hershey complex is huge. It is home to a resort, an amusement park, a water park, a large stadium for converts (country singer Luke Bryan played there tonight), and of course there was Chocolate World itself. There have been no factory tours since the early 1970’s. Chocolate World is instead a collection of shows and venues, usually related to ways to get you to open a wallet.

We took the free tour, which shows how chocolate is made. But, being a tourist destination, the demonstration is a full-featured ride. You ride in a little car, and see animatronic cows and candy bars along the way while your virtual guide explains how chocolate is made (about a dozen different steps). Fun fact we learned – Hershey’s is one of the only chocolate makers in the world to use fresh milk (others use powered milk).

Chocolate World was fairly mobbed when we went on the tour, but was packed when we got out; a thunder storm had moved in, so the amusement park shut down for a time, and many people came in to Chocolate World. I expect Hershey loves it when a brief storm moves in – some serious money gets spent.

Since the weather was bad and the car was far away, we got tickets to “Hershey Unwrapped”, a show where we were supposed to be students learning how to make chocolate. It involved a box of samples. It was silly and fun with two different actors playing a new teacher and an established teacher, and we had a good time. When we got out, it had stopped raining, so we decided to go back to the car.

That was about all we could do. The influx of people coming in for the concert meant that the crosswalks were full of people, so the cars trying to get out couldn’t go much of anywhere. After about ten minutes of waiting in a parking lot and only moving one car length, we parked and went back to walk around a little. We couldn’t get in to the amusement park, but we could watch some of the roller coasters through the fence. We also looked at the baked goods and custom confectionaries in another store, and by then the traffic was moving.

We headed to our hotel in Harrisburg after one false start (the GPS found three “Front Streets” and I guessed wrong on the first try). We got to the hotel at 7:30 pm but were told out room was not ready yet because the hotel was full for a firefighter’s parade on Saturday. Not great, but we had to eat anyway, so we went and got a light supper at an Indian restaurant, returning at a little after 8:30. No one was at the desk, and there was a sign saying they would be back in five minutes. So, we took a stroll along the Susquehanna River, getting back to the hotel about 9:00. We caught the front desk person leaving again, but managed to get into our room. Where the toilet tank didn’t fill correctly without reaching into the tank to mess with things each time. But, we had to live with it since there are no other rooms. I would have hoped for better from a national chain where we were paying $125/night (as a discount!).

So, tomorrow we will see if we can get smoothly headed to Iceland. Today was a fun day, and it was nice to break up what could have been a nine hour drive. It also acted as a good scouting visit should we wish to come back to explore the local chocolatier another time.