When planning this trip, we had hoped to stay in or near the village of Vík, but even booking rooms five months out, we could find nothing affordable there. With nothing tying us to staying in Vík proper, we booked a room between Vík and Kirkjubæjarklaustur, "church town cloister/monastery" in English. Our room for the night would prove to be a cabin on a farm about 40 minutes east of Vík and one of the best places we would stay on the entire trip.
We did not have all that far to travel today, so we thought that taking time for a leisurely sit-down breakfast might be in order. When we checked-in, we learned that breakfast is available at the adjacent property. The landlord from whom we rented our room lives on the property next door where his mother reigns over the reception hall and dining room. They invite all their guests to this property for breakfast for a reasonable fee. She told us that between these two properties and others in town, they had about 70 rooms, a really big business.
While the mom cooked an egg for Ann, we made coffee and helped ourselves to breakfast from the attractive buffet. On a gray, windy, misty, and chilly morning, it was so pleasant to sit inside with a warm cup of coffee while looking at the weather outside. Breakfast was a comforting start to our day, almost a luxurious feeling and a definitive break in our routine of getting up, packing, and driving off on the next leg of our trip.
As we pulled out of the driveway onto the Hringvegur headed west in the direction of our first stop, it was raining hard, an ill omen. The rain caused us to skip a potential hike of Múlagljúfur, a 7-kilometer walk to Hangandifoss, one of Iceland's tallest waterfalls. Continuing west, the closer we came to the visitor center for Skaftafell National Park, the sky teased us as it became brighter and brighter.
We pulled in to a lot a few hundred meters from the Visitor Center. All the closer spaces seemed to be occupied. Once at the Visitor Center, we hiked uphill past three other smaller falls to Svartifoss, the waterfall that was the inspiration for Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavík. Amazingly, the rain held off until the last few hundred meters.
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| Adjusting Boots for Walk to Svartifoss |
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| Alpine Lady's-mantle, Ljónslappi, Alchemilla alpina |
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| Common Lady's-mantle, Maríustakkur, Alchemilla vulgaris |
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| Bog Bilberry, Bláberjalyng, Vaccinium uliginosum |
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Up on the Mountain, This Pigeon Approached Us
Unusual That it is Banded |
Now in the rain once again, we left the teeming crowds behind us and continued west on the ring road toward our B&B. Along the way, we stopped as we felt like it, this section of highway having some interesting things to see, many of which are not touristy. We were intrigued by a massive monolith called Lómagnúpur, a subglacial mound. Such mounds are formed when lava erupts under a glacier but is insufficient to drive all the way through the ice to the surface. They resemble magma intrusions, but the formation process differs.
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| Lómagnúpur, a Massive Subglacial Mound
Formed Under a Glacier |
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| A Little Offroading |
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| I Love the Slide Tracks in the Moss |
At Núpsstaður, we were highly intrigued by a farm house with several barns with turf roofs built into the ground and hillsides, a common theme in rural Iceland. Even more impressive is that this farmhouse is tucked into a dell against a cliff off of which a delicate waterfall drops. In a country full of idyllic landscapes, the siting of this farm might win a prize for most photogenic location.
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| Farmstead with Turf-Roofed Barns |
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| I Would Love a Waterfall in my Backyard |
A bit further to the west, I spied another barn hard against a cliff with yet another waterfall spilling down towards it and a whitewater river flowing in front of it. I pulled to the side of the road, not realizing that we were pulling in beside the waterfalls that are arguably my favorite in the whole country of 10,000 waterfalls. The Fossálar waterfalls are among the lesser-known waterfalls in Iceland, small, but dramatic and graceful. I find great beauty in these types of low falls.
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| The Barn, Waterfall, and Whitewater That Caused Me to Stop |
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| Exploring the Fossálar |
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| Another Delicate Fall in the Same Location |
Just beyond the Fossálar waterfalls that we stumbled on serendipitously sits the Dverghamrar ("dwarf rocks") columnar basalt formation that we aimed for intentionally. Although these columns sit right on ring road, while we were there, we had the place to ourselves. The site is so small that it gives an intimate look at the columnar formations, that when viewed at close range have an unusual texture. At one point in their history, the columns were exposed to the ocean where the action of the waves lapped them, softening their edges attractively.
Just west of the town of Kirkjubæjarklaustur, the roadsides featured rolling hills in the background with ragged lava softened with a thick covering of moss in the foreground. I found the scenes captivating especially with sun starting to peek through the clouds.
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| Rolling Hills Background, Moss-Covered Lava Foreground |
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| Seems Like a Great Place to be a Sheep |
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| Mýrdalsjökull Ice Cap in the Distance |
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Crowberries on the Roadside, Krækilyng, Empetrum nigrum
Also Found in Oregon, My Least Favorite Fall Berry |
Passing through the moss-covered lava was a joy especially with the sun coming out. But we had to get down to the business of finding our room for the night, which is so remote that the owner sent us directions, GPS coordinates, and instructions not to follow either Apple or Google Maps. The GPS coordinates got us close, close enough to drive into the owner's backyard, but not close enough to get us to the apartment the next driveway down. That was easily rectified.
Back on the ring road nearing our destination, I spied a handsome bridge and pulled to the roadside to take photos not yet understanding that our path for the evening led over that very bridge. In fact, our room for the night was visible from the bridge, out in the middle of farm country, if we had known where to look. With the warm afternoon sunshine lighting the scene, I was taken with the bridge over the Eldvatn and the bucolic setting of the adjacent sheep farm with its red roofed buildings framed by the glacier ice gleaming white in the background against the blue sky. I would not have believed this morning that today would turn out to be this beautiful.
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| Bridge Over the Eldvatn |
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| Farm Near the Bridge |
Following the GPS, we turned right and drove over the bridge that I had just photographed. It dawned on me that we were just south of the Landmannalaugavegur area in the Icelandic highlands, the starting point of the famous Laugavegur trail. As we wound past the farm I had just photographed, we crossed a river and started back down the far side. This river, the Kúðafljót, is one of the largest glacial rivers in the country and was plainly visible from the porch of our apartment, just a couple of kilometers south of the bridge.
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| Our Duplex Apartment |
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Happy Hour in the Warm Sunshine
I Have on Shorts; Why the Gloves and Beanie? |
Being here on this farm got me really nostalgic, reminding me of being on my grandparents' farm and reminding me why I enjoy so much being in the country. I grew up in a tiny village in the country 45 minutes from town. Looking around also reminded me that Iceland, like the eastern part of the U.S., is round bale country where out West, we use large square bales, the easier to transport and to compact into shipping cans for export.
Everywhere we went in Iceland, we saw newly baled hay in the fields and stacks of bales at farms. The white wrap on the round bales makes them look like giant marshmallows and we started calling farms with such bales, marshmallow farms. The wrap comes in many other colors too: black, mint green, black and white, and so forth. We called the bales vanilla, chocolate, mint, and Oreo according to their wrapper colors, colors which have no significance other than that happened to be the color du jour in the baler.
After Happy Hour, it cooled off enough for us to be glad to be indoors, where I fired up the induction cooktop to boil water for pasta in no time flat. The frozen scallops came through like a champ and ended up with lemon juice, lemon zest, and butter in our dinner pasta.
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| Tagliatelle with Bay Scallops and Lemon |
After dinner and the dinner dishes, I set to looking into our day tomorrow. But so far out in the country, our internet was taking forever. I gave up dealing with the lag and lack of bandwidth and headed off to sleep hoping that the awesome weather would continue tomorrow.
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