Month: June 2016

I can’t believe it’s Thursday evening already! I’m going to report on our day yesterday, and then do the same for today, tomorrow (I hope that makes sense 😜).

After our long first half of the day catching up and enjoying the Viking Café (which, despite a bit of a shabby exterior, served a amazing latté and had the fastest internet we’ve seen yet), we took off in the van to work our way back west, with the goal of hitting a campground in Hveragerði last night. In between, we had about 420 km (about 260 miles) to cover. Along the way, we enjoyed the following:

Next up was a beautiful canyon that we’d missed the day before, called Fjaðrárgljúfur (don’t even try pronouncing that; it’s only thanks to Wikipedia that I can spell it, even with the Icelandic alphabet).

It was a highlight of the trip so far for me. I’ll even include a link to the Photo Sphere I shot as well (think Google Street View). Here’s a few of my attempts to capture it with my iPhone:

Lastly, here’s the link to the Photo Sphere on Google Maps:

https://goo.gl/ohyfdx

The last stop of the day, before the campground, was another waterfall we’d missed the previous day, called Skógafoss. We arrived there about 11:30 pm, but there was still enough light to get some good shots.

I hope you’re not getting too tired of waterfalls, as we’re not done yet! This one is probably the most popular of them all.

I thought this little video, created from a “Live Photo” via a new Google app called Motion Stills and posted on Instagram, turned out pretty well too:

I must say, we have been so lucky with the weather this entire time, it’s truly astounding. Of course it looks like that may come to an end, just as the trip is coming to an end. Today was pretty rainy, as you’ll from tomorrow’s post, and tomorrow’s forecast is the rainiest yet, and Friday & Saturday look similar. I’m sure we’ll just make the best of it though.

That’s it for now, check back tomorrow!

After a marvelous last evening with Deb & Peter in South Tawton, they drove us to the airport Monday morning for our flight back to Reykjavik. We arrived to a little better weather than the last time, and more importantly, our bags were there too. It felt good to know our way around a bit, and we found our camper van place pretty easily. After getting the tutorial on it, we headed into town to see if we could fit the bikes in we’d rented. Unfortunately, the van wasn’t set up as we expected, so it looked like the only way to fit the bikes in would be to flip the mattress and lay the bikes on top. When we got the bike rental place and talked to the guy there, it became clear that it wasn’t going to work out. I won’t go into the gory details about the van, but as we’ve been touring around since picking it up, it’s apparent that the way they configured it isn’t typical. It’s a brand new van though; we’re the first to rent it, so apart from being bigger than we need, it’s certainly comfy. The mattress is huge, so it’s great for sleeping; just not great for hanging out the rest of the day!

The first afternoon/evening, we headed east along the coast, and took in our first waterfall about an hour outside of Reykjavik:

That spot actually contained an entire series of waterfalls, but that one is special because you can actually walk around behind it. About an hour further, after passing many other waterfalls, several of which we’ll probably hit on the way back west, we decided to stay in the little village of Vik. There’s a campground there, which we pulled into about 11:30 pm. Sunset is right about then, and it rises at around 2:30, so it basically never gets dark this time of year. (Another weakness of the van is that there are no curtains, even though it’s set up with little cords that they would hang from. Fortunately, we have plenty of stuff with which to make do.)

 

Right now we’re hanging in the Viking Café in Stokksnes, probably as far east as we’ll get on the south coast. When we pulled in around midnight last night, it appeared abandoned, but has been hopping all morning. They offer camping, including showers, which we enjoyed, and now we’ve been catching up on email (and this blog post) all morning.

Yesterday was spent getting used to the van life. It was a little challenging at first, but I think we settled into a good routine by yesterday afternoon, and are feeling much better about it today. The funny thing is that Mallory insists on driving, while I navigate a crazy combination of Iceland-specific apps, Google Maps, and brochures. Keeping track of all the recommended sightseeing spots is made more difficult by the challenges of the Icelandic language and alphabet, but we’re definitely getting better about it all the time.

Next up was Svartifoss, a spectacular basalt-column-lined waterfall in Vatnajökull National Park:

From there, it was off to the very popular Jökulsárlón, an iceberg filled lake below Iceland’s largest glacier. I will try to add one of the videos I captured there, since the sound the icebergs make while melting is fascinating. Hundreds of iceberg chunks line the beach near where the lake empties into the sea:

Since it’s light all night, we’ve been tending to eat really late, but upon arrival in Höfn, the town we expected to spend the night, we managed to find a restaurant open until 11! The campground in Höfn wasn’t very welcoming, but they did tell us about this place, so we drove here after dinner. Which brings me back around to now. It’s already early afternoon here, so we need to get moving on our (long) day. Talk to you all tomorrow!

I’m sitting at my sister Deborah’s dining room table, in their cozy 17th century-thatched-roofed home in South Tawton, Devon, UK. We’ve been here since Thursday, and have been having the most wonderfully relaxed time. Lovely big cups of tea at all hours of the day, porridge & crumpets for breakfast, hours spent reading (or working on the blog 😁), walks down the narrow country lanes and up onto the moor (they actually live within Dartmoor National Park) and fabulous dinners whipped up by Deborah; life here is absolutely idyllic. Deb & Peter are the most accommodating hosts you can imagine, and Mallory & I have been trying to earn our keep by gardening and working on computers and misc. handyman stuff (you can guess who’s doing what on that list). It’s been more foggy and rainy than any day in Scotland, but the sun has also broken through a fair bit as well.

There’s been a couple of local events of interest as well. The church ‘féte’ was yesterday, with a bric-a-brac table (manned largely by Peter), burgers and sausages, a dessert table and lots of games. This afternoon, in nearby South Zeal, they’re having one of probably hundreds of regional celebrations of the Queen’s 90th birthday. (We saw signs for one in Duns, Scotland, and lamented missing it, so are glad we get to experience it here!) In preparation of that, Mallory & I helped Deb hang the Union Jack from the flagpole atop the tower of the 15th-century church next to their house. Here’s a photo of my sister and me after the we raised it:

This panorama, taken from the tower, shows the even older church house on the far left, and Blackhall Cottage (their home) on the far right:



Yesterday, we Mallory & I had a nice walk up onto the edge of the moor, and on the way back, I snapped this shot of an impressive giant oak tree:

Then this morning we walked to the neighboring village of South Zeal to restock provisions, and I found lots of things to photograph:

I’ll wrap up for now, as the three Yanks are about to head off to the Queen’s celebration. We fly back to Iceland at noon tomorrow, and though I’m very excited for the extended time there, it will certainly be bittersweet to say goodbye to Deborah & Peter. One more sweet afternoon/evening to enjoy until then!