One thing that Iceland teaches is that rock can split when enough pressure is applied. Meredith wanted to see the area near Reykjavik called the Golden Circle, which has several popular sights along the somewhat circular route. The first place we stopped today was Pingvellir, a national park. Pingvellir is known for two things – it is where the North American plate and the European plates are diverging, leaving the Pingvellir valley between the two cliff faces of the continental plates. Pingvellir was also the home of the Alpingi, Iceland’s first parliament, which started meeting in the 900s.

On the way to Pingvellir, we drove through misting rain, heavy rain, no rain, spots of sun, and back into rain again. When we actually got to Pingvellir, it was misting some, but we plowed on. The mist wasn’t enough to keep away the Icelandic midges, which came out in force, so we resorted back to putting our insect netting over our hats (to the positive comments of several people). We walked down a ravine right next to North America, and turned into a small viewing area, which is where it happened. We started getting real rain. And my touristic rock, Meredith, started to crack. She looked sad, and when I asked her about it, she said she had hoped the rain would hold off, and she was discouraged. Rain. Midges. Continents drifting. It can be too much.

Happily, she hung in there, because in a few minutes, the rain stopped, and much later the sun even came out occasionally. The midges would disappear if you walked into the wind, and otherwise, the netting handled them, so that was good. The continents were still drifting, but Meredith overcame that one.

We wandered all over the paths of the valley, visiting two waterfalls on the river that falls into the valley. We walked next to the cliff face and visited the best-guess site of the Alpingi. We peered into windows of the small parish church and looked around the headstones of the graveyard.

The only downside to the morning was steps – after all the climbing we have done, we were tripped up on rock steps in the park. Meredith actually skinned one knee, and I just managed to catch myself when I tripped later. Constant vigilance is required in Iceland!

After a quick stop for a novel thing called “lunch,” at which we actually ate food not at breakfast or at supper, we drove on to Gullfoss, a huge waterfall at the far end of the Golden Circle, and from which the drive gets its name (Gullfoss means “Golden Waterfall”). Gullfoss is an impressive waterfall, even to people who have seen many waterfalls over the last two weeks. It’s a two-stage waterfall, with a thirty-five-foot upper drop down an angled rock face, before a seventy-foot drop into a canyon below, which is at an unusual ninety-degree angle to the falls (like an “L”). Most canyons just extend straight off the falls.

The area is well developed for tourists, with boardwalks for much of the area, and an upper and a lower viewing deck. You can also walk out past the boardwalk to stand on rocks looking right at the upper falls and right down into the lower falls. You do get soaked from the lower spray when you do this, but that almost didn’t matter today, as the rain came back for us at this stop. By the time we did both platforms and walked out to the rocky area, my pants were soaked, and I was getting cold from the eighteen-mph winds. Don’t get me wrong – Gullfoss is an amazing sight, and we stayed for some time, but by the time I got back to the car, I decided it was better to dig in the trunk for a pair of pants that I had already worn and retired for the trip than to try to get the pair I was wearing dry.

The rain again more or less stopped at our final sight of the day – the Geysir geothermal field. This is an area of boiling or near-boiling water that actually forms scalding-hot streams. That was new to me. It also houses Geysir, the original… geyser. It is no longer very active, but it was the first geyser that Europeans became aware of. Now, the geyser nearby, Strokkur, gets all the tourist love as it erupts in a spray of water every ten minutes or so.

It is a very bizarre thing  to see stunningly clear water that your experience tells you is cool and refreshing, while your eyes and brain are screaming at you to stay away from the steaming cauldron. To drive the point home, the “welcome” sign to the park reminds you the nearest hospital is sixty-two kilometers away.

We looked around at all the pools, and then took a path up to an overlook. Along the way, we passed a perfectly still pool with no steam, but labeled as 80-100 degrees Celsius. The spring next to it was actually boiling actively. As we crested the rise of the path, we were greeted with a view of a large green valley with a small river and multiple horses grazing. It was lovely, and unexpected, since the area we had just walked through mostly only supported grass away from the water pools. We got to the main lookout area, and enjoyed the view in all directions for as long as we could take the strong and cold wind.

We finished our visit to the geothermal park by standing with a group of other tourists to see Strokkur go off. It obliged nicely, with a huge bubble forming on the surface before exploding a large amount of water into the air. I think we all paused for a second when it looked as if the plume might drift our way, but the wind drove it back.

There are other things that can be done on the Golden Circle, but it was 5:30, so we headed back to our hotel area to grab some food and settle in for the night. Food and rest often act as a good cement for all of our touristic cracks.

WARNING: The following blog contains middle-aged people in rain ponchos. This material is not suitable for all audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.

While we’ve not had great weather days much in Iceland (only four days out of thirteen so far with no rain), we’ve had great luck with the rain either being light or stopping whenever we stopped to see something. That streak ended today, as we had light to steady rain until after 5:00 in the evening. But, as the Meredith says, the tour must go on!

So, rain or no, we headed back to Skogar, this time to see Skogafoss, the waterfall that is on many bus tour stops. We saw why – it is a large waterfall of about two hundred feet, with good water volume, and it is framed by green cliffs that it cascades over. It’s a classic waterfall, falling straight down into a pool, and of course, it’s only two hours from Reykjavik, making it a good tour stop.

As a bonus, there are five hundred steps or so that take you to the top of the falls to a viewing platform, where we went. To my surprise, there was a trail there. So we walked along it for a half mile or so, finding a lovely second falls that I really loved – it was small and wide and had interesting features – an island, rapids, steps, and such. I thought about going on and then saw a sign that said the bridge was three miles away and some other important point was fifteen miles away. I thought the steps were for tourists, but they are also there for hikers. Because of the steady rain, we turned around. On a nice day, I would have been tempted by the six-mile round-trip bridge hike. I looked on Google Maps, and there are about a dozen named waterfalls on the hike. Next time.

We headed up Route 1 to another famous waterfall, Seljalandsfoss. This is a smaller waterfall in volume, looking a bit puny compared to Skogafoss. But the real draw here is that you can walk behind the waterfall. We planned on doing that, and had been warned that we would get wet, so we donned the very sexy matching ponchos we had brought along and followed the trail up into the mist. It wasn’t very bad – it was similar to many misty rains we have had on this trip already. Our normal jackets that are water resistant probably would have been okay, but I didn’t mind staying dry.

The view from the back was fun, especially when I looked up at where the waterfall seemed to be ejected from the top of the cliff face. It was an odd and unfamiliar view to be under the arc of a falls like that. But Meredith and I both also really enjoyed the waterfall from profile. You could watch water fall the entire two hundred feet down into the pool, and the falls seemed to come in waves or clumps of water that you could trace through the air.

We got back in the car, again grateful for heated seats in late July, and drove on north to the Lava Center in the town of Hvolsvollur. The Lava Center tells the story of Iceland and the volcanic activity over the history of the island. It is interactive and highly up to date, even including the current eruption that has been going on since spring.

The museum greets you with a map of Iceland and wall monitors that show all earthquakes on the island in the last forty-eight hours. That was eye-opening, especially when many quakes seemed to center on Katla, the volcano under the Myrdalsjokull glacier. There have been indications that Katla is gearing up for another eruption, and if a big one comes, it could flood the southern coast with sudden rivers the size and flow of the Amazon.

There was a twenty-minute-long video showcasing all the eruptions in the south for the last one hundred years. As an aside, this was the first theater I’ve seen where there were mats laid out in the front so people could lie down to watch the show. All of the volcanoes were impressive, but the eruptions of the last fifteen years were in vivid high-definition videos, which was sobering.

The interactive part of the museum let you move simulated eruptions backwards and forwards on a timeline to see how they worked. The screens were stationed over islands upon which were projected rivers of lava. It was visually quite effective. Another room – the whole room – was a projection of the skyline around the Lava Center which showed the six volcanoes close by (most within twenty-five miles). You could stand on specific spots and learn about the volcano, and use gestures to “go” to points on the mountain to get more information. All the while, each of the six volcanoes erupted in turn, sometimes filling the entire screen with blinding ash.

Ash, it turns out, is way more damaging than lava. It covers much more area, and endangers people and animals. Most lava eruptions are not explosive, and even the ones that are violent tend to throw lava only short distances. Of course, some volcanoes erupt with both ash and lava, sometimes for months at a time or longer.

It was a great little museum, and perfect for a rainy day. One startling fact we learned is that Iceland has thirty active volcanoes being monitored. That’s a big number for a country roughly the size of Maine.

After the museum, we stopped off in another town for a combo lunch/supper meal of pizza a little before 5:00. Lunch is often the ignore meal when we tour. Then, on to our hotel in suburban Reykjavik. It was very weird seeing a city again after two weeks of being in very rural areas. Happily, the rain stopped as we approached the city, so we didn’t get wet moving our luggage into the hotel. This hotel is very big and modern, and is the first hotel we’ve been in that has not looked out over a mountain or stream or ocean or all three. We see a highway. But we’ll be here for three nights, so it is good not to have to pack up every day.

We had to take our return-home Covid tests, and that took almost two hours by the time everything was done, but at least we are officially Covid-free, and so can get on the airplane. It was now 8:00, so rather than make some big trip out and about, we took a two-mile walk in a small nature preserve five minutes behind our hotel. It is a weird thing to be walking though a lava field with suburban buildings all around and being able to hear an outdoor concert in the distance.

Having gotten back to the city, we completed our circumnavigation of all of Iceland. The ring road (Route 1) is 825 miles long, but if the rental record was correct on my initial mileage, I drove something closer to 2,400 miles in thirteen days with all of the side trips we took. I told Meredith that next year we are going to Denmark (less than half the size of Iceland). And we have more driving coming tomorrow – Meredith is planning on doing the Golden Circle drive near Reykjavik, which will be another 155 miles. But we are supposed to be rain-free after 9:00 am, so tour on! I won’t be putting the driving into driving rain.

Diamonds, so the song proclaims, are a girl’s best friend. That doesn’t hold true for Meredith, whose love of European travel gives her an energy and endurance that can astonish at times. She often leaves her marathon-running husband in the tired dust. Meredith does come around to diamonds, though, when it is a sight to go see.

We started the day needing to get to the area around the town of Vik, and I was racing against the weather clock this time. Vik was supposed to start to get rain around 1:00, and I wanted to do some touring there before the heavier rains came along. Still, I had to make one stop – Diamond Beach, which is the beach next to the Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon. The lagoon empties out along a short and fast river that dumps into the Atlantic Ocean. When icebergs get small enough, they float down the river and out to sea, except for some which get stranded on Diamond Beach.

We had looked over at the beach the night before and hadn’t seen much ice. Still, it was on the way, and I had heard good things about it, so I stopped by. There was ice all over the beach. I don’t know if the tide had gone out and stranded more ice, or what had happened, but there were icebergs all over, from the size of my fist to the size of large boulders. Most were glinting in the sun because they were covered with meltwater, and they really stood out because the beach is a black sand beach. It was beautiful. We strolled around the place for about half an hour before getting back on the road.

The road to Vik got us along long plains of flat space where the glacier used to be a hundred years ago, but then changed into one of the largest lava fields in the world. There were cone-shaped mounds everywhere, which I assume was a result of lava meeting up with water. As we got close to Vik, we went back to mountains, with Iceland’s second biggest glacier, Eyjafjallajokul, sitting on top (and oozing down the mountains).

We drove on through Vik, and I turned down the road to Reynisfjara, another black sand beach. My brother had been here and loved it, and it sounded cool. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the cafe (now being cautious to eat when we can!), and then went to explore the beach in a misting rain.

It is a dramatic place. The beach is mostly made up of very small black pebbles, although it does have some sand near the waterline. It is also dramatic in the numerous warning signs telling you not to go in the water and not to go near the water and not to turn your back on the water. Iceland has a phenomenon called “sneaker waves,” in which every now and then, a wave much much bigger than the other normal waves will sweep in on people and carry them off. Sadly, two people have died because of them in the last fifteen years. Meredith and I noted where the maximum wet sand line was, and then we gave that a healthy buffer.

The beach is walled in by a cliff which is made of twisted columns of basalt (cooled lava that looks like pillars), and it also has some sea stacks out from shore. Throw in several sea-eroded caves in the cliff, and you have a pretty magical place. With the misting rain, it kind of added a somber feel to the place, but didn’t get us wet through our coats and hats.

Since it was about 3:00 and we could check in, we drove down the road a bit and found our hotel. We tossed our bags in our room and headed out again, this time to Skogar, home of the Skogafoss waterfall, one of Iceland’s most visited. We went to the Skogar Museum. It is an interesting little museum in that it is an outdoor folk village of six buildings from the late 1800s, and an indoor museum of transportation and technology. We like folk museums and hadn’t been to one in Iceland yet, and it was starting to rain a little harder, so a museum seemed like a good idea.

The folk museum had several turf-roofed houses and sheds, some of which were very nice inside. Wood was at a premium in 1880 Iceland (and probably still is), so many of the formal rooms of the houses on display were made from driftwood, or, in one case, wood salvaged from a shipwreck. The tiny one-room schoolhouse on the grounds was in use near here until 1968 (the ring road, Route 1, wasn’t finished in the southeast part of Iceland until 1972). The small church was a reconstruction on the outside, but the interior is almost all original and was pretty – carved wood that was brightly painted blue.

As the rain started to pick up, we moved inside to the transportation museum. There was a good section on the founding of Iceland’s postal system, which used to be by private contractors who had to pay for everything (food, horses, etc.) themselves. There were only four postal district sections originally – north, south, east, and west, and each section could initially only hire one man. This was expanded to two men in the south in the 1880s. Postmen had to carry horns with them to try to summon help should they get in trouble in a river or some such, and three postmen on the southern route died on duty. It sounded like an insanely difficult job.

Much of the rest of the museum was dedicated to transportation that moved well in snow (like half-tracked or fully tracked vehicles), or to machines used to make roads. Both of these made perfect sense for an area that had no roads to speak of until around 1900. The final section of the museum showcased rescue equipment and vehicles, which also fit for the area.

After the museum, we went back to Vik to have a good supper to make sure we didn’t miss an open restaurant. I also wanted to go to the Lava Show, where they mess around with molten lava, but the shows were all sold out. Still, we did get a good and hot supper, which we don’t take for granted in Iceland now.

We made an early evening of it because of the rain, but I suspect Meredith would rather be rained on in Iceland while touring sights than be rained on back home schlepping papers from her classroom to the car. She needs the energy boost from the one to keep up the other for nine months each year.

Meredith has a travel axiom – you will waste some time or some money when you travel, and it is best not to fret too much over it. Due to a map error in our guidebook that mistakenly placed our cabin near a sight I wanted to see, I ended up wasting an hour of driving today on top of a long driving day already. These things happen, and it was still a good day.

Today was not a “the journey is the destination” day. I wanted to get us to Iceland’s south coast region as quickly as I could. It was still amazingly scenic – we drove in and out of at least half a dozen fjords, and there were many places begging for a photo stop. I pressed on, with only two bathroom stops over six hours. But we made it in time.

I had been aiming for the Fjallsarlon glacier lagoon. It is the smaller of two lagoons in the area, formed by the retreating Vatnajokull glacier. Being the smaller lagoon, it is far less crowded than the bigger and better-known (and tour bus stop) Jokulsarlon lagoon. Moreover, the Fjallsarlon location had boat tours on a more intimate scale (since the lagoon is smaller), getting you up close to the icebergs in the lagoon as well as to the glacier face. We got there a little before 3:00 and got booked on a 3:30 boat. We wandered up to a viewpoint over the water to fill up the time, and then headed back to get suited up.

For safety reasons, you have to wear a jacket that keeps you warm should you fall in the water, and over that is a lifejacket that inflates on contact with water. Since the tour takes place in an inflatable craft where you sit on the rim of the boat,  these are good precautions. (We didn’t fall in.)

There were eleven of us on the boat – eight adults and three older children, and then the pilot. He was both informative and amusing. He passed on that the boat was as unsinkable as the Titanic, and we would be fully safe as long as we saw no icebergs. He also told us there are three main colors of icebergs – blue, for ones newly calved from the glacier; white for any iceberg older than a day old; and dirty ones that scraped the mountains along the way down. Blue icebergs are blue because they are dense from being compressed during the five-hundred-year journey to the lagoon. When those start to melt (within a day), air gets absorbed into the surface ice, which makes them look white.

The trip was thrilling to me – not like anything I had ever done before. To my recollection, I have never been in an inflatable boat, let alone one surrounded by icebergs. We started out and headed toward where the ice had drifted back toward the glacier (the wind was blowing that way for much of the day). I was disappointed that the ice formed a solid mass and there did not seem to be a way through. Our pilot told us to hold on and rammed up on a small iceberg, which was especially exciting to me and Meredith, since we were sitting in the prow of the boat. With the nose of the craft beached on the iceberg, the guide simply used the boat to move it out of the way, since the ice was floating. We did that trick a few times in different places.

We weaved in and out of ice packs, making our way closer to the glacier wall. At one point, when the boat was stopped so we could take photos of an iceberg, the glacier let out a “boom” and calved a small iceberg. I didn’t see the ice falling, but I looked over in time to see the water splashing up and some ice fragments hanging in the air.

We got quite close to the glacier, but kept a safe distance. The guide fished out a small chunk of ice so we could hold five-hundred-year-old ice and get our pictures with it. He said it is pure ice and goes great with whiskey.

The entire tour lasted about forty-five minutes and was an amazing experience. We got out of our gear, and Meredith and I hurried to the cafe. It was 4:50, and they closed at 5:00, and there are no towns within fifty miles of the lagoons, so this was our only eating option we knew about. We grabbed the last two sandwiches that they had, and that was supper. Meredith commented that never before has she been so unsure of getting meals while touring Europe.

I wanted to go check into our room, which looked to be about ten minutes away on our map. Then we could return to see the big lagoon. The guesthouse turned out to be about thirty minutes away – the map had the location wrong. That meant thirty minutes there, checking in, and then thirty minutes back to where we had just come from. Mistakes happen sometimes when you travel.

We did get back to Jokulsarlon, and we loved it. It is much bigger than the other lagoon, and the icebergs are huge. We both agreed the smaller lagoon has much more ice, but the ice that Jokulsarlon has is big. The sun was also low(ish) on the horizon, so the water and ice were glinting in the low sunlight. There were still a lot of people around, but not nearly so many as the parking lot could hold (and no buses). It was a quiet place of beauty, except for the two booms of distant calving that happened while we were there. We were too far away from the glacier to see anything, but you sure could hear it.

After a quick look across Route 1 to see where the river dumps the icebergs into the sea, we headed home for the evening. It was an early turn-in for us (8:30), but we have been touring hard and long for a few days now. Sometimes getting rest is not wasting time.

Given how tiring yesterday was and the late hour we got to sleep (after midnight), Meredith let us sleep in until 9:00. That was quite welcome. We had breakfast/lunch in a bookstore/cafe that was cute, and we were finally underway for touring around noon.

Mer warned me we would be doing some driving today, and that today was another somewhat “the journey is the destination” kind of day. We went south along the lake of the area, Lagarfljot (“River Lake” – it’s narrow), which also took us through Iceland’s national forest. Much of Iceland was deforested a long time ago, but in this region, Icelanders have regrown 280 square miles of forest. Combined with the lake and surrounding mountains, it was beautiful.

We crossed the lake at a narrow part on the southern edge, and we soon were driving up paved switchbacks to climb up to what I thought would be a pass. Instead, when we reached the top, we were greeted with a huge open plain with views of mountains in all directions. At some points we could even see a small part of Iceland’s largest glacier, Vatnajokull. This open space was not just a barren lava field, but instead was smooth spaces with some grasses growing.

We stopped for a very welcome bathroom stop at a surprise-to-us little hot spring and guesthouse place in the middle of this plain. We justified our use of the bathroom by buying some cake. I’m not sure who stays up there, but it sure felt remote.

We continued on the paved road, although I often hugged the middle line or crossed it a little, as the sides of the pavement were not always in great condition. That worked out okay, as we met only about one car every ten minutes.

Despite “the journey being the destination,” we really did have a destination, and one that once again shows that Meredith loves me. We came to a huge dam called Karahnjukar that came online in 2007. The dam runs a six-hundred-megawatt power plant, which is used to run the Alcoa smelting plant in Iceland. Energy is so cheap in Iceland that it makes fiscal sense to ship old aluminum to Iceland, melt it down, and ship it back to other countries. To make this dam, eighteen hundred people worked on it for five years, drilling and blasting over thirty miles of tunnels to route water around. We got to chat with an engineer who happened to be outside, and he said they have six turbines that run continuously to keep the Alcoa plant supplied. He said the national grid can back them up to the tune of two of the six generators if they need to take them offline. That is amazing; by comparison, he said the transmission lines that supply the entire north of Iceland supply one hundred megawatts. The entire national grid can’t back up the dam – the smelting plant uses that much power.

From the relative safety of the observation platform, we looked over the dam and surrounding mountains and crazy Swiss workers installing rock-catching fences on the opposite cliff. After ten days of hard hiking and treacherous footing, poor Meredith caught her foot on a normal step and fell hard, coming to within about one inch of hitting her teeth on a step. Never let your guard down in Iceland! We (and here I mean Meredith) had the option to walk along the pedestrian ledge of the dam all the way across. I walked “with” Meredith about ten feet below on the normal and safe sidewalk. We had great views of the canyon that is currently dry, but should have spillover water from the dam sometime next month as the glacier meltwaters fill the reservoir behind the dam. The pictures we saw made it look as if the waterfall from the spillway is something to see when running.

We spent about an hour at the dam, and then drove back the same way we had come. We could have kept going, making the journey a loop drive, and our Icelandic engineer said we would be fine, but the road that way becomes an “F road,” which in Iceland is an abbreviation for “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Those roads are rated for four-wheel-drive vehicles only, and are forbidden in a rental car. We played it paved and safe, and we saw several things on the way back that we had not seen on the way out, in the usual Iceland 360 sort of way we have seen all along.

We went back to the guesthouse to regroup. It was a little after 5:00, and we decide to go have supper in a cute little town on a fjord called Seydisfjordur. Apart from the waterfall in the Westfjords, this was one place in Iceland I really wanted to see.

We drove up the pass on a paved road through several switchbacks. It came out in a pretty place of pretty snowy mountains feeding pretty lakes. We eventually came to the descent, and went down several switchbacks, loomed over on two sides by pretty mountains with dozens and dozens of pretty waterfalls. The town came into view, down in the pretty valley area. It was nestled up against a pretty fjord, with a pretty river running into a pretty lagoon near the pretty harbor, towered over by pretty cliffs on either side.

I pretty much had forgotten my camera. It was back in the hotel room.

We had an excellent meal sitting outside, with grand views as dining companions. After supper, we took the recommended guidebook walk, which took us around the lagoon and past the ferry terminal that serves the ferry to Denmark, a two-to-three-day trip. We ended up climbing part-way up the double waterfall at the edge of town, which gave us great views of the harbor, town, and mountains all around. It was picture perfect.

We headed back to our room, with a brief stop at a gas station to use a free car wash for the second time on this vacation. Iceland is hard on car exteriors.

Tomorrow we start to head directly south, along the eastern coastline. It’s a four-hour drive, according to Google Maps, so I figure closer to five, which makes for a longer driving day. I’d better get another good night’s sleep, and try to remember the camera this time.

Travel is a blessing in itself in that it exposes you to new experiences and ideas. But travel also has a way of reminding you what is important, like being thankful. Sometimes, travel reminds you to be thankful for a hot dog.

We started the day off in Lake Myvatn, and on check-out from our room, our hostess recommended we go see Studlagil Canyon, which was on our way east. She said it resulted from a dam being built, and the lower water exposed the canyon just a couple of years ago, so it wasn’t in most guidebooks. She showed us a picture, and it looked pretty amazing, and I like taking advice from locals, so I filed that away as a place to go should we have time.

We first, however, drove a short way to the southern side of Lake Myvatn, to walk the Crater Trail. The trail weaves in and out of pseudocraters, which look like mini-volcanoes; they are the result of when lava hits water – the steam explosively escapes, and the magma builds up on itself. It was a cool but dry morning, and a farmer was out in his tractor aerating his hay while a small herd of horses grazed on a hill overlooking the lake, with a large volcanic crater in the background. It was a great place for a hike.

We took in all the cones; the crater trail only takes twenty minutes. We took an easy stroll down a longer path that went by the lake and caters to bird watchers. That path also still wound around some small craters, and it took about forty minutes to hike. That also got us to about 11:00, which was when a cafe we wanted to go to opened.

The cafe was at the trailheads of the Dimmuborgir lava fields. “Dimmuborgir” means “dark castles,” and these dark castles are huge columns of various lava formations. Local lore says they are trolls that turned to stone in the sunlight, and Meredith and I saw one that was pretty clearly troll-like on our walk. We got launched into the labyrinth after we had a hearty breakfast/lunch of all-you-can-eat soup and bread.

There are various trails, many of which are paved, in the Dimmuborgir area, and we studied a map of the system. I saw a dashed line that went right through the heart of the columns, so we took a paved trail to that trailhead. Which was marked, “Warning! Difficult trail!” I was pleased.

The trail wound all through arches and columns and caves and craters. We even saw some cracks in the ground that still had ice in them. The trail was tough, and went up and down and around craters and stones, but it was magnificent to be surrounded by such rough beauty. When we came out on the other side to a standard trail, I saw a sign for “Kirkja,” so I had to check it out. It was about a third of a mile away, and turned out to be a huge stone arch that looked a little like a vaulted church, thus presumably leading to its being called “Kirkja,” the Icelandic word for “church.” Good side trip. We headed back on an easy trail to the parking lot and headed out eastward on Route 1.

I decided that since Route 1 took us within twenty minutes of Iceland’s largest waterfall (by volume), Dettifoss, we should swing by. As we got close to the turnoff, it started to rain a light rain. We pressed on, figuring it might let up. We got to the parking lot, and it was still raining, so we broke out the Westfjords clothing and walked the mile to the falls. The last half of the trail was through basalt rocky areas, which were fascinating. So was Dettifoss – you can see the spray from the falls from the parking lot, which is about a half mile away in a straight line. The torrent of water was impressive. As always, I couldn’t get too close to the canyon edge to look down, but the roar was very loud, and the spray from the falls easily came back up over the canyon walls just north of us (on our side of the canyon, near a viewing platform). We walked around to get different angles on the falls, before we carefully walked up to the viewing platform. That was better – I could safely see down into some of the canyon. As we left, once we got away from the falls, we discovered it had more or less stopped raining – the mist we were getting hit with was all from the falls.

Because I was now wet and cold and had to use a bathroom, we skipped going south to the nearby (half a mile away) Selfoss falls, but we were very pleased that we could still see them from the trail as we walked back. We had missed them on the way out because we were facing the wrong direction. Iceland 360!

We got on the road just before 4:00, headed east again. This turned out to be the only fairly boring drive in Iceland that I have done. The road passed through uninhabited stone and rock fields, but rarely with anything interesting going on. After what seemed to be a long time, we saw the sign on the side of the road for Studlagil, the canyon our hostess had told us about. We turned down the road about 5:15, and I figured it would take us a half hour to get there (the Google map she had shown me did not seem to show it too far away), half an hour there, and half an hour out, which would have us to our guesthouse by 7:30. Late, but not too bad.

Then the road turned to gravel. Bad gravel – it was wash-boarded in many places, which shook the car quite a bit and slowed us down. We plowed on. We saw a signposted map and discovered that the canyon was sixteen km away (ten miles). No big deal. After a bit, I did the math and realized that this would take us thirty minutes at safe speeds, and we had already been driving a bit. We pressed on. We pulled off the dirt road into a small parking lot only to realize most trucks and jeeps were still going. We saw cars gleaming in the sun a couple of miles down the road, so we went across a bridge and onto this new road.

I should say “road.” It was really a tractor trail. And a one-lane one at that. But I felt that since we had so much time invested, we should push on, and the road was only a couple of miles long. We safely reached a full parking lot, so I parked on the side of the road, safely out of the way. We had made it! It had taken much longer than I’d thought it would, but we would walk to see the canyon and then be on our way.

We started walking, encouraged by the steady flow of people coming back in the other direction. We knew that we were on the right path and that many people thought it was worth seeing. The footing was rough – coarse gavel, newly put down, so it felt like walking in coarse sand, which is hard. We trudged on for some time, and I finally asked a man how much further. He told me about thirty minutes, but that it was a good viewing point. By now, I definitely had too much time invested to turn around, so we went on. And on. And on. Turns out, from where we parked to the canyon was two miles.

And just as you start to see the canyon, you can also see the observation deck on the other side of the canyon. The one with the metal stairs. The metal stairs that lead to the road. The dirt road I had been on an hour, and two miles of hard hiking, before. I was a little put out by that revelation.

The good news is that the canyon is beautiful, and our non-road side was the better one for viewing. The observation deck side was taller than ours, so we could see more of the basalt columns that were on that side of the canyon. Additionally, we could wander around on our side all over, finding different viewpoints. Some people even climbed down to the river level, and we saw at least two people jump in for a (quick) swim. We hung out there for some time, and hiked out.

By the time we got back to the car, it was 7:30. And we still had to drive out and get to town. Many things in Iceland close at 8:00, and almost everything closes by 9:00. We began to brace ourselves that we might be going hungry tonight.

We got near to town. I had no specific idea where our guesthouse was, and I wasn’t sure if we would find anything open to go in and ask. So I prayed that we would find it, and as soon as I stopped praying, Meredith saw a sign for it on the side of the road. Thank you, Lord. Travel can teach thankfulness. We skipped the room and drove straight into town to see if we could catch something open for food.

We saw a Subway with people inside. It was 9:07, and we went in, only to be told they were closed. We saw a nearby N1 gas station with attached store, so we went there figuring we could at least pick up some snack food. It was mobbed with cars, and had a restaurant attached. We were going to get supper after all! We were looking at the menu when a man told us the kitchen closed at 9:00. Sigh. We figured we could still get snack food, when we saw some pizza in a glass case, for selling by the slice.

We got in line. We were going to get pizza! We were fourth in line. The woman at the front had a bunch of stuff, and then at the end pointed at a bunch of different pieces of the pizza. All but four pieces gone. That was still okay. The next woman asked for two pieces. Two left. That was okay – we saw two hot dogs left as well, so we could get pizza and hot dogs. Then a man who wasn’t in line asked the clerk behind the counter for a hot dog. This was getting rough.

We got to the front of the line and asked for the pizza and if we could have two hot dogs. I asked just out of desperation. Turns out they have a bin of warm water hot dogs in waiting (Icelanders love hot dogs, so I have been told). So we had two pieces of pizza and two hot dogs.

We ate with real gratitude. We hadn’t eaten since noon, and it was now about 9:30. We had walked fourteen miles (according to my watch), and driven for couple of hours on good roads and over an hour on rough roads. We were tired and hungry, and we were thankful for gas station pizza and hot dogs. And we still are.

Travel makes you keenly aware of your need for kind people and for God’s provision. That is one of many reasons we keep doing it.

Yesterday, we kept reminding ourselves that sometimes the journey is the destination. Today, that really was the case for much of the day. When I decided to stay in Hofsos, I asked Meredith if I could intrude on her plans for today a little by finishing the drive around the Trollaskagi Peninsula, which is supposed to be one of the prettiest drives in Iceland. Happily, she agreed, as long as she could do the two things she had planned for the Lake Myvatn area. I told her she could push one of them into Monday if needed, and so we were set to go the scenic way around.

But first, we needed to backtrack a little bit. Just south of Hofsos, about two miles away, is a turf church, with wooden end walls, but with a turf roof that goes from the apex of the structure all the way to the ground. We had missed it on the drive the night before, which is no surprise since it turned out to have a sheep gate across the access drive. It’s easy to open, but not something we would have seen after a long day of driving. We found it, and parked in the small lot near the church, but had to traverse a field to get to the site itself. No big deal, but we did seem to disturb some birds, which isn’t a joke in Iceland. If they are arctic terns during mating season, they can be very aggressive. These weren’t, but it was a couple hundred tense yards to the wall of the church, which was also made of turf. The enclosed cemetery still seems to be used on occasion, with the most recent headstone dating from 2003. With the snowy mountains in the background, it was a lovely spot.

Back on the road, we headed north. The drive did not disappoint. Soon after Hofsos, we turned a corner, and a whole line of majestic mountains, with heavy snow still on the peaks, came into view, all over a fjord. It was an amazing sight, and one that was with us for a decent part of the drive. I’m afraid I didn’t get any pictures of it – Iceland can have long stretches of road with nowhere to pull off, so getting photos is difficult or impossible in places.

As we neared the northern point on the peninsula, and the pretty town of Siglufjordur, we encountered a one-way tunnel. Happily, for my driving sanity, we had the right of way. Cars coming in the other direction had to pull into carved-out nooks spaced every hundred meters. It seemed stressful, but since I had the right of way, and the tunnel was fairly short, it worked out fine.

Just as we were pulling into Siglufjordur, there was a small pull-out. I stopped so I could look around and take a photo of the pretty spot, when I noticed a viewing platform above the parking area. Meredith had seen it, but hadn’t decided if I needed to know about it more than she need not to climb. Up we went. The path wasn’t marked, and so we made one wrong turn, but we eventually made it to the platform. What a view, and, in Meredith’s term, Iceland-360; there was beauty in every direction. There were  snowy mountains in front of us, a rocky mountain behind us, a fjord right below us, and the mountain-framed town to our right. You could hear a small stream from the mountain behind us, and a gentle breeze was blowing. The air was clear and clean and had a hint of flowers and cut hey in it. I told Meredith that the platform was probably my favorite spot in all of Iceland (to date). We stayed up there for twenty minutes or more.

The town of Siglufjordur is quite cute, with a large church and a small square and friendly avalanche-catching fences up on the mountains around town. We finally ate breakfast and lunch (combined – most eateries don’t open until noon on Sunday) in a small restaurant, and then stockpiled some large cinnamon rolls for later consumption. As an aside, Siglufjordur is our personal record for northern latitude, at only about forty miles south of the arctic circle. I loved the town.

Leaving town was still beautiful and exciting – we went through the longest tunnel I’ve ever gone thought, at 1.8 miles long. Five hundred yards later we entered a four-mile-long tunnel. That was followed by another village on a fjord and surrounded by mountains, and then we got another one-way tunnel. We again had the right of way, which was good since this one was over two miles long. Playing tunnel Frogger going the other way did not look to be much fun. If you ever visit the Troll Peninsula, make SURE to do it in a clockwise direction!

We rejoined Route 1 and made our way to Lake Myvatn. Over the drive, the landscape changed from rolling farm fields with scenic mountains to a blasted landscape of lava fields and scrubby bushes. My introduction to the lake was a small series of cones that looked like fifteen-foot craters (they are actually magma tubes that cooled off quickly). The lake is lovely, but the area around it is undeniably hostile looking. We checked into our guesthouse, and got situated. Meredith, the merciless taskmaster, insisted we tour on, and so we drove a short distance to the Myvatn Nature Baths. Touring is hard.

Myvatn sits on a fault, and so there are a lot of things going on here, thermal-wise. This, according to a write-up in our room, was where Iceland’s first geothermal plant was built. Near the plant are the baths, which, while not so large as the famous Blue Lagoon, are still really big and really nice, and cost half as much. We checked in and got into the bath with our new closest two hundred friends, and soaked away. The temperature of the water varied naturally in the large irregular pool, and so we wandered the whole pool to find a good spot.

I voted for one that was both very warm, which felt good, but also was somewhat in the shade. I saw several pasty northern Europeans in various stages of severe sunburn, so I wanted to be careful. I think I succeeded, and we spent a happy and relaxing couple of hours in the pool before having supper at the cafe there.

Meredith said we could head back to our guesthouse, since it was now 8:00, but also said her second sight was close by. I thought we should at least check it out to see if it could be done in an hour or so. I’m glad I did. First, we got a great view of the entire Lake Myvatn area from an overlook at the top of a small mountain pass. That was a nice bonus. But on the other side of the hill was something I had not anticipated – Namafjall, a blasted wasteland of hot springs and boiling mud pits.

The area strictly warns you to stay on the paths since the ground around the springs and pits is unstable. The springs are boiling hot, and the mud pits are also boiling, with the bonus of being made up of sulfuric acid. I stayed on the paths. It turns out to be an unsettling thing to hear the “blurp” of boiling ground. I also avoided the steam of the largest vents, fearing it might still be dangerously hot. But it was a beautiful place, in a bleak way. It was certainly something way outside my experience.

After about an hour, we headed back to the hotel for the night. One of the benefits to being in a thermal hot spot area is there is tons of hot water. Good for thermal baths, of course, but our bathroom encourages a “power shower” to highlight the green energy of the area. I’m planning on taking it to mean taking a long shower in the morning, to help melt away the stress of my beautiful day today.

As Meredith likes to say, especially in Iceland, sometimes the journey is the destination. Of course, the destination usually has my bed, but she is right that seeing the scenery here is special. And some days it has to be, because on long country-wide road trips, some days are travel days.

We had to get from our hotel in the far west of the Westfjords to the small village of Hofsos in the north central part of the country. I was worried at first, as our hotel was fogged in, and the roads in the Westfjords are already slow and require careful driving. Happily, once we were underway, the fog lifted in about two miles, and we had a brilliantly sunny day the entire day. Even so, it took four hours to leave the Westfjords. We did have one quick stop for a light lunch, and we could even sit outside to eat. It was a pretty place, so that made for a good stop.

Even out of the Westfjords, it took another five hours to get to Hofsos, which included a supper stop (in a less pretty interior of an Iceland restaurant). But the sun continued to shine, and we drove around a dozen different fjords today and four different mountain passes. We saw fjord-style layer cliffs, “normal” mountains, and mountains that looked as if they’d all had their tops cut off by a giant. We saw pretty streams and quite a few mountains with snow still on them, and saw sheep and ponies aplenty.

The reason we are spending the night in Hofsos is three-fold. One, Meredith wants to be at Lake Myvatn by tomorrow evening, so we needed to get to the general area of north-central Iceland today. Two, Hofsos is on Route 76, which a couple of guides have marked as maybe the prettiest drive in Iceland. Three, Hofsos has an amazing infinity pool and hot tub.

Two successful businesswomen donated the pool complex to the tiny village of 190 people. It is beautiful in and of itself (I am fond of infinity pools), but it also looks out directly over a fjord at a mountain range. Add in a ton of sunshine, and we had a really great swim and soak. We stayed in the pool/hot tub for about an hour (until 8:30 – they closed at 9:00). It was very much a community place, with many people speaking Icelandic. We also heard English, French, and some Slavic language (maybe Polish?). We have now been in high-end spa pools, good community pools, and rustic pools. They are all nice. Iceland does know how to do a good hot pool.

After our pool session, we dropped our wet stuff in the room, and walked around the town. We lingered at the church and the cemetery, and we relaxed in the warm air looking at the snow in the mountains (two mountains nearby still have solid snow tops). And now, my destination is bed.

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.