(Eden) 

[Pictures at the bottom]

Up until now we’ve been experiencing Iceland Deluxe with the relative lack of wind and overall blue skies — it wasn’t until this morning that we got the full gray skies and drizzle combo that we were anticipating for most of this. We compensated accordingly by sleeping in and making pancakes and eggs and getting off to our latest start yet, which is still almost acceptable because we are still “jet lagged.” 

The rain feels very far away right now because we are currently driving northeast along the Ring Road in southeast Iceland at — spoiler alert — the most perfect of golden hours, with the sun illuminating the grasses in an insane glow. We’ve seen several rainbows as we drive in and out of gentle rain. It is stunning. There are massive mountains to the south behind us and we are driving along mountains that alternate between slopes and sharp cliffs down to the flat plains. We just passed the little town of Hofn.

Now we’re at our campsite for the night.

Returning to the morning: We rolled out of camp around 11:30 and headed west back along Route 1 to Fjaðrárgljúfur, a stunningly green gorge featured in the official Game of Thrones trailer (which only Dad knows). The misty atmosphere was perfect for the location. The view up the canyon from the initial bridge was almost better than the subsequent two lookouts, but all of it was of dark gray rocks covered in beautiful bulbous green moss, with a river flowing serenely down at the bottom. A couple smaller “foss”es trickled down the edges. We did not venture the whole way to the big foss at the end of the trail, but Dad got some thoroughly epic drone shots, so we essentially saw it all.

Then we resumed our voyage eastward, driving close to an hour to Svartifoss, a waterfall located near a massive tongue of the big glacier Fjallsjökull (which is much larger than the state of Rhode Island). It was raining slightly for the start of the hike but cleared up by the end such that we were sweating in the sun. As the saying goes, if you don’t like the weather in Iceland, wait 10 minutes and it’ll be worse — except we again are getting lucky with the sun! I really liked this hike. It was a nice meander upslope along paths that were alternating packed gravel, gravel with plastic grates, and wooden stairs. The waterfall itself was actually unique to the ones we’ve seen so far (I have lost track of the total) — it flows over the edge of a cliff composed of the hexagonal columns of rock like at Reynisfjara, the black sand beach of yesterday. Dad, Elliot, Harrison, and I took a longer frolicky way back across the other side of the gorge, which gave us amazing views of the valley below and glacier farther to the east. It was hard to fathom the scale of literally anything but it was fantastic. We rejoined Mom and Kieran halfway down and frolicked together the rest of the way back. I should start a word bank of the limited vocabulary we employ as a group. We could have most of our conversations using only 20 key words. 

Next was a short drive to the adorable turf-roof Hofs Church and then a bit farther to the Fjallsjökull (glacier) viewpoint. After a very short walk we were rewarded with a stunning view of the massive crevasse-y glacier extending up up up up beyond the small glacier lagoon. Perhaps I will let the pictures tell the story. I lay in the sand with my eyes closed and tried to quiz myself on the details so that I could have the image seared into my brain, but it still isn’t worth my words to describe. The scale is awesome in the truest sense of the word. We took some ridiculous pictures and loaded back up once more…

… only to stop not far down the road at another viewing point! First we went seaward to Diamond Beach, a famous black sand beach where chunks of glacier wash up on shore. The chunks of glittering ice give the beach its name. Unfortunately for us, ice does not fare well in August, so we only saw small diamonds, but it was magical all the same. We meandered under the bridge to the other glacier lookout (Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon) and spent a delightfully long time staring at the beauty there, too: massive chunks of blue and white floating in a massive lagoon before the enormous glacier sprawling down from above to meet the water. There were a million seabirds in the sky, and soon we realized there were also a million seals! We sat on a picnic bench and just stared for a nice while as Dad captured both locations from above before joining us.

Then we started our glorious golden hour drive, following the road as it wove along the coast and among cliffs and rained on and off. So, so, so beautiful. 

We got to our campsite at Vestrahorn, a small campground perched at the base of a towering row of peaks, with an expansive shallow black sand bay and beach stretching out in the other direction. We were a little worried about not getting a spot there but they still had room! Unfortunately, the views were dampened by the low cloud presence that obscured the peaks, but it felt a little like we were at the end of the world. Dad got his drone time; we ate pasta and sauce and hot dogs; and were in bed at a semi-reasonable hour.