Iceland Adventure, Day Two: Vík to Höfn

After quite an eventful Day One, we were ready to really begin exploring Iceland in earnest. We made sure to leave early enough to visit places we wanted to see without sacrificing a small bit of leisure time in the morning. So, after making coffee and breakfast, we got ready and hit the road. 

One of Rebecca's requests for places to see in Iceland was to see "ancient stuff," so I took her to Rutshellir, just a few miles from the hostel we'd stayed at the night before. 

While it's not necessarily ancient, records dating back to 1714 mention it, so my guess is it's older than that. 

We parked in the parking area and made the short walk to a wooden turnstile. I've never actually seen one of these in person, so that was pretty cool. These allow people to easily and safely climb a fence without destroying it.

We climbed over it and got a perfect view of the structure. Cut out of the hillside, it's the largest man-made cave in Iceland and, over the centuries, was used to store hay and food items and was probably even a residence at one point.

There is an elevated walkway that runs from the entrance to the back, where the larger cave is.

It's larger than it appears, and to the left is a smaller cave cut up high into the wall.

Because of the little window, I did not turn my flash on for this smaller cave.

We then got back on the road (the Ring Road, of course) as we had the busiest day of our trip ahead of us. The West, South, and a bit of the Southeast of the country are the most touristy areas of the country.

Often, we would stop to snap pictures of the nature around us. Of course, we made sure to only stop at designated pull-offs or side roads, as stopping on the shoulder is prohibited. This stop was on a side road because I spotted a bit of Vatnajökull. 

For those of you unaware of what Vatnajökull is, here's a map:

See that green area that says Vatnajökull National Park? Well, Vatnajökull is a glacier. In fact, it's the largest ice cap in Iceland, covering 8% of the country, and the second largest in Europe. The monumental size of it is nearly incomprehensible, but I wanted to capture as much of it as I could while we drove alongside it for over a day.

We continued on to our next destination, but made a quick pit stop at Reyniskirkja Church.

Consecrated in May of 1946, this tiny church and cemetery serves the tiny settlement of  Reynishverfi. Fun fact: I got my bachelor's degree in Religious Studies, so I love visiting churches of every shape and size.

Close-up shot of this headstone. As someone who descended paternally from Swedes and am 50% Swedish, the naming scheme is very Scandinavian.

From here, it was a short drive to a very popular tourist spot, Reynisfjara.

Reynisfjara is a black sand beach and a UNESCO Global Geopark. 

Known for sneaker waves, I made sure to keep a safe distance from the beach and never turned my back on it. I saw a girl break both of these common-sense rules and watched her very nearly get sucked out into the water. Yikes.

Rebecca got a bit closer than I liked, but she's an adult.  LOL

We both picked up a few black rocks to take home before getting back on the road.

We made an unplanned stop (one of many on this trip) at Eldhraun Lava Field. Formed during a volcanic eruption in the late 1700s, this lava field is the largest of its kind in the world. It covers over 200 square miles, and the moss that covers it takes a century to grow back.

Because of this, one is forbidden from walking on it, although there are clearly delineated walking paths that are roped off. The landscape is like nothing I've ever seen before, and I jokingly called it "Moonbase". Turns out it was used by NASA in the 1960s to train the Apollo 11 astronauts. What a coincidence!

We spotted Vatnajökull National Park Visitor Center, so we pulled in. We got a great view of this waterfall from the top of the building. We saw waterfalls trickling down the mountainside all over the country because of the prevalence of glaciers.

Here's a shot of the visitor center.

And a bit closer. What? There's a outdoor walkway that goes to the roof? 

Why, yes, yes, there is. It was up here that I snapped a picture of that waterfall. We went inside, bought some souvenirs, and got some good travel information from the girl working the desk. Like everywhere we went, the Icelandic people are friendly, helpful, and almost all of them speak English.

We made another pit stop to check out more waterfalls...

...and to visit the first Icelandic horses we came across. 

Next up was Jökulsárlón, a glacier lagoon fed directly by Vatnajökull.

You can see the big glacier in the background and chunks of glacier floating in the water.

While beautiful, I couldn't get the Vatnajökull view that I saw seven kilometers back out of my head, so after we visited here, we went back.

I'm so glad we did, because as we climbed over the hill, we got the most magnificent view of Vatnajökull. Honestly, it was the best view of the glacier we saw the whole trip. I mean, look at it!

We walked right down to the beach of this smaller glacial lagoon. I was completely awestruck. I can still feel the air and light, misty rain on my face. I can still see the glacier as it appears to float down the mountainside like lava. Truly stunning.

When my grandma passed last year, my mom gave us a bit of her ashes in a necklace. I've been taking Grandma with me on fun days, so I brought her along to Iceland. I took this picture and sent it in a group chat to my mom, my aunt, and one of my uncles. My mom joked that I should make sure she has a sweater because we know how cold she gets. 

I obliged and had AI create this photo. We all enjoyed that.

Our last, but surely not least, stop of the day was Diamond Beach. Like our other stops this day, it has black sand, a view of Vatnajökull, and pieces of glacier.

The bits of glacier look like diamonds, hence the name.

You can see the glacier just behind the "diamonds". It's so beautiful, but again, the landscape hardly looks real.

Wow, just wow.

I've never seen anything like this before, so I admired it for a long time.

After this, we headed to our hostel to check in. While the listing states it's in Höfn, it was actually 30 km southwest of Höfn. And it was on what could almost be considered an F-road. It was filled with washboards and potholes, not conducive to our tiny Toyota Yaris rental, and probably would have been banned from driving on this road. Thank god we got a full insurance package.

Our room was spacious, and we had this gorgeous view out our window.

After getting the car unloaded and freshening up, we drove into Höfn to dine at Heppa Restaurant/Horn Brewery. It's right on the harbor, so the view was excellent. I got a burger with fries, a side of onion rings to share, and two drinks. Now, in Iceland, you can only buy alcohol at state-run liquor stores (you can buy very low-level beers in grocery stores, but that's pointless). Fortunately, Horn Brewery has single-bottle service, so I was able to grab a few cans of beer to enjoy back at the hostel. 

Of course, I picked this one. As I enjoyed it, I sent my kids a nightly text with pictures. All homes are heated geothermally, so it's always quite warm. Because of this, we always had a window open. The curtain was pulled back to allow the cool air in, and it was dark, DARK outside. All of a sudden, a sheep bleated somewhere outside the window, which startled me a bit. What a fun memory.

There's more to share about our lodging, which was the worst stay of our trip, but I'll save that for the next post in this series. I hope you enjoyed Day Two.

Until next time!