(Eden) 

Motivation to beat the shower lines was an excellent alarm clock this morning — we were miraculously all up by 8! I forced myself to do a quick run down to the edge of the ocean but unfortunately that meant I had to wait in a shower line after all. But then we were on the road by 9:25 (record time! and freshly clean!) heading southeast back along the ring road to Hofn, a tiny seaside harbor town. Hofn seemed a bit sad. It was mostly hotels. We stopped for a toilet and gas and left immediately. 

Oh wait — Dad just reminded me that before Hofn we stopped at a Viking village recreation on the same property as our campsite. If I am remembering correctly, that was the original site of the first village in Iceland! We had fun poking around, particularly on the ship. We made a brief stop at Stokksnes, another black sand beach, before going to Hofn.

After Hofn we saw the Red Chair, literally just a big red chair bolted to a rock on the side of the road, before a short but fabulous frolic to Skútafoss. The trail was in a small valley between two massive slopes extending upwards on either side of us, and the view ahead was of more similar foggy mountains. All of the adjacent mountains (like at Vestrahorn) have these wildly craggy tops that jut out of slopes seemingly made of rock piles. Harrison scrambled up to the base of the rocks and that gave us a sense of the scale. The waterfall itself wasn’t massive but we had a fun time crouching behind it and poking around in the adjacent cave and taking a million pictures. I really regretted not bringing my suit because the water was a gorgeous turquoise and the cave would’ve been the perfect shelter to dry off afterwards. Next time, I told myself, but I still have yet to swim.

We stopped at the Hvalnes Nature Reserve Beach to eat a hot lunch. This would have been a perfect beautiful amazing drone shot — Route 1 bends around the blunt peninsula in a gorgeous way, with the peaks jutting up dramatically above it — except that a layer of fluffy gray clouds covered most of the peaks. Grand Tetons 2.0 for Dad [meaning that during our cross country trip in 2016, the Teton mountain range was completely shrouded in fog and clouds when we visited, much to Dad’s disappointment]. It was still an incredible place to pull out the camping chairs and eat our leftover noodles and sandwiches. Dad’s drone was fully tested by the winds, but it handled it like a champ.  

After that, the weather mostly cleared up and the rest of the day was an adventure weaving in and out of the fjords! aka the most insane views ever. Such diversity of beauty!! It was a pretty awesome afternoon, interspersing the driving with lots of rounds of Liars’ Dice, and interspersing the Dice with looking out the window at the insane view, and interspersing the looking with lots of stops: 

We stopped at:

• Lækjavik, a black sand beach with nice views but not as beautiful as the one near Vik;
• Djúpivogur, another little coastal town that was much cuter than Hofn and had an awesome public sculpture art of 34 eggs (Eggin í Gleðivík) arranged in a line along the coast, one for each species of bird that is found in that area;
• Blábjörg, incredible green rocks along the coast formed by volcanoes and some other cool science;
• Stöðvarfjörður, a little coastal town (actually we did not stop: just drove through);
• Fáskrúðsfjörður, another little town that was settled by the French and thus has French flags flying and all the street names are labelled in French and Icelandic;
• Gilsárfoss, a last-minute decision to stop and hike, which ended up being my favorite part of the day: a perfect tundra-esque landscape to collect tufts of sheep wool as we meandered up the hill with the riverbed far below, until we went down to meet it at the waterfall, which again fell into a beautiful pool of turquoise water and had caves to explore. Kieran discovered clay(!!), and along the way back we realized that what we had thought was a pizza oven might actually be a kiln! And I picked wild blueberries. This hike felt magical – we were completely by ourselves surrounded by towering mountains, the fjord, and the falls. 

And now we are at the main campsite in Eskifjörður, the biggest town (city?) we’ve been in since probably (definitely?) Reykjavik. It is on the shores of a long lake (Lagarfljót) that we will drive around tomorrow. Dad and I are sitting in the laundry room waiting for our stuff to come out of the dryer. It is taking forever (Dad waited until 12:30 am for it to finish!). Our campsite is at the edge of a small woods, and earlier Harrison and I ran up the trails in it to a small rocky overlook with views of the campground and nearby lake. It was epic. We ate tortellini for dinner sitting outside in our camp chairs.

Today felt different for some reason. The fjords felt yet again really unique, we did not see many other people, the waterfalls were smaller but less crowded, and the dice was a fun way to pass the time. Not that any of us are wanting time to pass! Dad and I just mapped out the rest of our nights here. We all agree that it feels like we’ve been here forever — and yet the end is already within sight. So much to do! :~)