It was months ago now. I was cruising around the internet, hopefully trying to be productive but probably not succeeding, when something caught my eye. Something about crazy. cheap. flights. I clicked, and saw that the flights were going to Iceland. I knew nothing about the country, but I was instantly intrigued. The flights were cheap during September, right when we would be celebrating our six year anniversary. It was a crazy thought, but it was a seed that dug deep into my brain. I tend to be an impulsive decision-maker at times, and I knew this was something I would actually have to bring up with Adam before jumping on it. I slept on the thought, and woke up in the morning still just as excited about the idea. It took a bit of persuasion, but I finally convinced Adam what an epic trip this would be….and then I clicked “Purchase.”
Like I said, at that point I knew very little about Iceland, but for the next 5 months I lived and breathed Iceland. I started following tons of Iceland-related Instagram feeds, I checked out books and looked at maps. I read SO many blogs about other people that had gone. My little Research Heart was in heaven. Iceland was my project, My Baby – I lovingly nourished it and dreamed about it.
Still, I couldn’t believe it when the time had finally arrived to pack my bags and get ready to LEAVE! My mom and Michael flew out to watch the boys, and Adam and I readied our passports and broke out the winter gear. Then, we hopped on a plane without our kids, and set out for adventure.
I discovered two important things about Iceland from our trip:
1) Iceland is special. I don’t know how else to explain it, though I realize how cheesy that sounds. There is truly something magical about a country that only has THREE people per square kilometer. It feels so personal, to have so much space and seemingly-untouched nature to enjoy to yourself.
2) In addition to the above, Iceland is for adventurers!! Yes, the capital has (from what I hear) an awesome nightlife/party scene. But if you just stay in Rekjavik, you are truly missing out.
For anyone curious, here is what I packed for clothes:
– 2 pairs of warm compression/legging running pants. These are not cotton! They are designed to wick away moisture from your skin, and are made of polyester.
– 2 pairs of regular leggings
– 2 pairs of under armor shirts
– 2 regular shirts
– 1 sweater
– Socks, underwear
– Hiking boots, sneakers, flip flops
– Winter coat, gloves, scarf, hat, and snow pants
– We also packed one sleeping bag. I wasn’t sure if this was going to be overkill or not, but I also didn’t know what kind of blankets we would be provided with our camper.
Here is the camera gear I packed:
– 2 bodies
– 32 gb card + 16 gb card
– 35 mm + 85mm (I had intended on bringing my 105 macro but accidentally grabbed the wrong one!)
We packed all our stuff in two backpacks and one check-in bag. We were planning on road-tripping around Iceland, and had rented a car with a sleeper in the back. This also allowed for us to always have a safe, locked place to keep our stuff if we didn’t want to carry it all on our backs.
After getting off the plane, going through customs, and obtaining our bag, we met up with our rental car company, Car Rental Iceland, who had driven to the airport to pick us up. He was waiting for us with a sign with my name on it. We hopped into his car and we drove 10 minutes away to his little car lot. He told us the weather was going to be terrible the next few days and that we should stay far away from the Southern Coast. I’ll tell you a secret: We didn’t listen to him.
He gave us a quick tour of our little camper van, and we were on our way. Our first stop was about 3 minutes later, when we spotted this little house built into the ground.
*A quick disclaimer: Some of these photos are from me and some are from my husband. I included both to tell a complete story, though some are lacking in quality due to the camera used. Don’t judge!!
Despite the cold. Despite the rain. Despite the wind.
I was already in love.
….But I was also exhausted. Unlike Adam, I couldn’t sleep at ALL on our overnight flight so I had literally pulled an all-nighter. Our Rental Car guy had told us that the Bonus stores were the cheapest for groceries, so after driving for an hour, we typed that in to our GPS and found a gas station/food stop in Selfoss near a Bonus store.
The cafe side wasn’t open so we just decided to take a “small nap” right then. Well, that turned into sleeping for SIX hours! We woke up around 3pm! We were going to eat at the cafe and try something “Icelandic” but MAN, was it expensive. Like, almost 20 bucks for a bowl of soup. So instead we grabbed some food at KFC. My favorite part was instead of serving ketchup with their fries, they had this jar of salt/seasonings to sprinkle on it. It was super delicious and kind of reminded me of the famous Old Bay Seasoning found everywhere in Maryland. Yum.
Once we realized how expensive food was going to be, we decided to hit up the grocery store next. We had so much fun trying to figure out what to buy! My favorite part about the grocery store is their carts! The wheels can swivel in any direction, which makes it SO much easier to get out of people’s way when it’s tight in the aisle. Such a brilliant idea. We left with some fruit, yogurt, cereal, milk, pasta, and of course…some dark, European chocolate. We also found these amazing biscuits with dark chocolate and they became our favorite treat for the whole trip. We always had to have a box on hand. After we walked out of the grocery store Adam said simply, “Well I enjoyed that experience.” It made me giggle that we were doing this together – our first foreign trip together – and I just loved watching his reactions to everything.
We continued to drive down towards the South coast, usually following the Ring Road (Highway 1) but also sometimes getting off the highway to follow a side road.
Getting off the main road is how we discovered Urrioafoss. We noticed a small Point of Interest Sign. We quickly learned that these signs mean SOMETHING AWESOME is just around the corner. We tried to stop at as many of these as we could on our trip!
We are happy to say that the most voluminous falls in Iceland was our very first Point of Interest stop! We were just so giddy and excited to be able to be free and crazy and do things on a whim and look at whatever we wanted. Our smiles were huge and we were literally skipping down the pathway.
Next up: Seljalandsfoss. The waterfall you can walk behind. It was a quick drive there, and it was easy to find – you could see it right from the road.
It was so dang windy out that our poor waterfall wasn’t even falling straight! There were a few other tourists there when we arrived so we decided to walk along the path in the opposite direction. In the picture above, you can see the pathway going off to the left. That led us to a little crevice in the rock, and you could just barely see the top of a waterfall pouring from up above the crevice. Adam was still reading the sign, and I told him I was going to walk down by myself. I climbed down, crawled across some rocks, and into the little cave.
That moment right there was complete magic.
Being completely alone in that small cove, for just a few minutes I felt so gloriously hidden. The only thought in my head was, “It’s just so special!” It was felt almost sacred. Like it was the most alone I could ever get without actually feeling lonely. Then Adam joined me and I heard him say, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” Hearing Adam say this – Adam, the boy who grew up in Hawaii and has swam under waterfalls and jumped off cliffs into the ocean and kayaked the Nepali Coastline, basically the Guy Who’s Seen It All – well, it made me feel like all my planning and reading and mapping out was actually going to be worth it. Hearing Adam say those six words validated the feelings I had just experienced by myself. That we were witnessing something unique and special. The pictures – which were super hard to take because it was so windy and there was water spraying all over everyone’s business – just don’t do this place justice. This waterfall was easily my favorite one of the whole trip — and we saw A LOT of waterfalls.
When we walked out of our secret cove, we climbed up a steep hill and found a ladder waiting for us at the top, so you could peer down over the edge and watch the waterfall hit the bottom. It was a sheer drop off though and I could barely poke my head over.
Here was the view from up there, looking out towards the horizon –
Then we made our way back to Seljalandsfoss, which was also completely misty and fogging up our cameras big time. Actually, Adam’s camera did a better job capturing this scene than mine did!
By this time, it was getting super dark. So we just parked here for the night.
That night, I experienced the most CRAZIEST WIND I have ever felt in my ENTIRE life. And I’ve lived in some pretty windy areas!! It was rocking our car so hard we could not fall asleep. Everytime I would get close to sleeping, another gust of wind would push us from side to side. Plus, the rain just pelted on our roof. It got so bad that I finally Googled, “How much wind does it take to knock over a car?” I read that it takes winds up to 70mph to carry a person away, and then I couldn’t get this image out of my head of me being completely taken up by the wind and getting blown all over Iceland. Adam and I laughed and laughed over this picture that we had tears rolling down our face. Finally, we moved our heads to the front of the car and that helped us not feel so much jarring.
Finally, sleep found us. I couldn’t wait to see what the next day brought!
Here are some tips I learned from my FIRST day in Iceland!!
– Iceland is a country that demands to be explored. You simply MUST rent a car and drive, drive, drive!!! I absolutely LOVED our camper car and will not do it any other way the next time we go (yes, there will be a next time).
– Bonus Grocery Stores are the cheapest!
– Everything I read said to “stock up on petrol cards.” I didn’t really understand that until we got to Iceland. Basically, there are a lot of gas stations that don’t have attendants there, and the only way you can fill up your tank is with a pre-paid gas card. You can buy them at the gas stations that DO have attendants. We never bought any petrol cards, we just made sure we stopped every time we saw a gas station with workers. Then we would go inside and pay with a credit card. But I can definitely see the value in using petrol cards so you don’t get stranded! But we were very careful and never let our car get below half a tank of gas. Next time we will probably invest in some petrol cards at the beginning of our trip.
-Please, please, please get off Highway One every once in awhile! Take a side road! They are always worth it.
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