After days of driving, hiking, glaciers, black beaches, questionable dirt roads and enough time behind the wheel to begin considering the RV a permanent address, Iceland Ring Road Part 2 brought us to Vök Baths in East Iceland.
This was exactly what we needed.
The geothermal pools stretched toward the lake, the cold Icelandic air sitting above the hot water while we soaked in it. After spending so much of the trip moving, there was something almost suspicious about simply sitting still. No sheep to avoid. No boulders in the road. No parking spot for Goldilocks to survey with her iPhone level. No rattling cabinets. Just hot water, cold air and a view across the lake.
We enjoyed the baths, eventually dragged ourselves out of the water and returned to the parking lot.
My copilot announced she was going to make us some lunch and coffee.
We had been driving as much as twelve hours a day while stopping everywhere we could along the way. For the first time on the trip, I decided to take a nap.
Nothing ambitious. Just a little sleep.
I climbed onto the bed in the RV and opened the window on my right. I opened the roof hatch. Then I opened the window on my left.
The window apparently had other plans.
It slid completely out of its hinges and fell onto the asphalt.
A good portion of the corner glass broke.
So much for the nap.
There are moments during a trip when you stare at something that has just happened and your brain needs a few seconds to catch up. A few minutes earlier I had been soaking peacefully in a geothermal pool overlooking a lake. Now I was standing in a parking lot looking at part of our rental RV lying on the ground.
Iceland had restored the natural order of things.
My Copilot Learns to Drive From the Passenger Seat
We continued north, and by this point Goldilocks had developed another skill.
She could drive a stick-shift RV without ever actually sitting behind the steering wheel.
I was technically the driver. She was technically the passenger. These distinctions became increasingly meaningless as the trip continued.
Sometimes I would be looking at the mountains, enjoying the scenery and drifting slightly into that state where you’re driving but also thinking about absolutely nothing.
Then, from the passenger seat, came one of the sweet reminders.
“Change shifts.”
A few minutes later:
“Watch the sheep.
”Then:
“Are you in a hurry?”
Nothing brings you back from peaceful contemplation of the Icelandic landscape quite like discovering that your passenger has appointed herself assistant driver, transmission consultant, livestock warning system and speed-control officer.
The irritating part was that after enough hours in the RV, she usually knew exactly what gear I should be in.
I tried not to encourage her.
Iceland Ring Road Part 2: Cows, Farms and North Iceland.
Around Lake Mývatn we stopped at Vogafjós Farm Resort, a working dairy farm where we ate a farmhouse meal while looking over at the cows eating theirs.
There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about eating on a farm while the animals responsible for much of what makes the place work are having lunch on the other side.
From there we continued across North Iceland.
The country kept changing without ever becoming less strange. Mountains, geothermal areas, farms, empty roads and settlements appeared and disappeared as we worked our way around the Ring Road.
We were still stopping constantly. A place would appear on the route, we’d pull over, pay another parking fee if necessary, walk around, get back into the RV and continue.
Then the passenger-seat driving instructor would resume her duties.
“Change shifts.”
I changed shifts.
Chasing Whales With Six Boats
We took two different whale-watching boat tours on different days because we wanted to see whales.
Eventually we did.
We saw a minke whale and a humpback whale.
But watching the whales also introduced us to another form of wildlife: tourists pursuing wildlife.
A blow would appear somewhere across the water and suddenly several large tour boats full of people would react at once. Engines came alive and everybody headed toward the same spot.
Then the whale disappeared.
I started imagining what was happening underwater.
Whales are intelligent animals. After watching the same routine several times, I became convinced they were down there playing a game.
Surface over here. Watch six boats full of stupid humans race toward us. Disappear. Surface somewhere completely different. Watch them do it again.
From the whale’s perspective, this might have been the entertainment.
From ours, it worked. We had come hoping to see whales, and somewhere between all the boats accelerating across the water, we saw both a minke and a humpback.
A Better Campsite and the Areola Borealis
We reached the campground around 10 that night.
As usual, we chose an open spot, parked the RV, plugged into the electricity and said hello to our new neighbors for the night. By this point, the routine was familiar enough that I thought we were finished moving.
Then Goldilocks asked, “Let’s go see the facilities.”
I knew there was more to it than that.
We walked around, and somewhere along the way she discovered another empty camping spot that she deemed better than the one we had just occupied.
Of course she did.
She stayed there holding the new spot while I walked back across the campground, disconnected the RV, said goodbye to the neighbors we had introduced ourselves to only minutes earlier, and drove the RV over to the other side.
Goldilocks had spoken.
Once the RV was finally parked in its second and apparently acceptable location, we settled in for the night. Goldilocks started cooking. We always cooked well in the RV, and that little kitchen became part of the rhythm of the trip.
While she cooked, I went outside with a cigar and some whiskey. Just whiskey, not the Icelandic stuff smoked over dried sheep dung. There are some cultural experiences I’m perfectly happy to admire from a distance.
We had bought our wine and alcohol at the duty-free shop because it was cheaper there, which in Iceland was reason enough to consider it advance financial planning.
Sitting outside, I started researching how you actually find the Northern Lights.
The advice I found was surprisingly simple. Don’t necessarily wait until you can clearly see green lights dancing across the sky. Look for a strange-looking cloud. Something that doesn’t quite look like the other clouds. Point your phone camera at it because the camera may detect the beginning of the aurora before your eyes can.
By then Goldilocks had joined me outside.
I started looking around.
There was something near the mountain that looked almost like smoke coming off it. Not particularly spectacular. Just a strange cloud.
I pointed my phone at it.
There it was.
And then, almost all at once, the show began.
The aurora borealis appeared above us.
We had spent all this time traveling through Iceland hoping we might see it, and there we were standing outside our RV watching it happen.
I looked around the campground.
Everyone was sleeping.
All those RVs, all those people who had come to Iceland, and as far as I could tell nobody else was outside.
Just us.
There was no brilliant planning involved. We hadn’t chosen that campground because of an aurora forecast. We hadn’t stayed awake as part of some carefully organized Northern Lights expedition. We had arrived around 10, changed camping spaces because Goldilocks found a better one, cooked dinner, and I happened to walk outside with a cigar and whiskey and search for how to find the lights.
It was luck.
Pure luck.
Naturally, once the aurora borealis finally appeared, I began calling it the “areola borealis.”
Not because I didn’t know the correct name.
Because it irritated Goldilocks.
Once I discovered that it irritated her, there was absolutely no reason to stop.
Thousands of years of human beings looking toward the northern sky in wonder, and I had managed to reduce the whole experience to an anatomical joke.
But standing there in the cold, with almost the entire campground asleep around us and the sky putting on a show that nobody had scheduled, it became one of those moments that justified every uncomfortable road, every long day of driving and every questionable decision that had brought us there.
Turf Houses and the Road Northwest
We continued west through North Iceland, camping at Bakkaflöt near Varmahlíð before visiting Víðimýrarkirkja, the historic turf church, and Glaumbær, with its turf farm and museum.
By this stage, the trip was becoming as much about Iceland’s human history as its geology.
The turf buildings looked as though they had grown directly out of the landscape. After days of seeing what Icelandic weather could do, it wasn’t difficult to understand why people built into the earth instead of trying to argue with it.
We continued through the remote northwest and toward Hólmavík and the Strandir region.
The farther we traveled, the more Iceland seemed to empty itself
That was part of what made driving it so addictive. There was always something farther down the road, even when the road appeared to be going nowhere.
The Best Hot Spring Didn’t Cost Anything
Eventually we reached Guðrúnarlaug.
After geothermal spas and developed bathing areas, this one became my favorite.
It was beautiful, easy to reach, empty when we were there and free.
No elaborate production was necessary. No complicated facilities. Just an outdoor geothermal pool sitting in the Icelandic landscape.
We got in.
Of all the geothermal places we experienced during the trip, this was the one that stayed with me.
Maybe part of it was the simplicity. Iceland can be extraordinarily expensive, and by then we had become very familiar with paying for campgrounds, food, parking and practically every other logistical requirement surrounding all that supposedly free nature.
Then you find a place like Guðrúnarlaug.
No $11 parking calculation. No campground bill. Just hot water and Iceland around you.
Of course, between repeatedly getting into hot springs and then climbing back out into Icelandic cold, my body eventually submitted its formal complaint.
I caught a cold.
That would become relevant later.
Waterfalls, Tomatoes and the Last Stretch of the RV
We continued toward Húsafell and Borgarfjörður, visiting Hraunfossar and Barnafoss and exploring around the Hallmundarhraun lava-field area.
Later came Deildartunguhver, another reminder that in Iceland the ground itself occasionally seems annoyed.
We also stopped at Friðheimar Tomato Farm during the southwestern portion of the trip.
After days of black rock, cold wind, glaciers and open landscape, walking into a working greenhouse full of tomato plants felt like entering another climate.
We ate surrounded by the plants.
It was another one of those Icelandic contradictions that kept appearing throughout the trip. Outside was Iceland. Inside, tomatoes.
By the time we reached the Reykjanes area and camped near Sandgerði, the RV portion of the journey was coming to an end.
We had essentially driven the Ring Road counterclockwise, added the Hólmavík and Strandir area, walked on a glacier, watched icebergs drift toward the ocean, seen puffins, a minke whale, a humpback whale and the areola borealis, soaked in geothermal water, driven roads apparently tested by military vehicles and sacrificed part of an RV window in the parking lot of a geothermal spa.
The cable was still hanging from the back.
Goldilocks was still providing driving instruction.
And somehow we weren’t ready to stop.
We Had No Plan After the RV
This presented a small problem.
We hadn’t really planned what came next after returning the RV.
We called to see if we could extend the rental.
We couldn’t.
Getting into Reykjavík without our own transportation wasn’t particularly attractive either. A taxi to the city was around $145 each way. The alternative was spending a large part of the day moving from bus to bus.
We had already spent too much time traveling around Iceland to sacrifice an entire day simply getting ourselves somewhere.
So we rented a 4×4
Calling it compact would be generous.
After living in the RV, getting into this thing felt like being packed into a sardine can. But it had four-wheel drive, it moved, and most importantly, it meant we weren’t going to lose a full day of Iceland sitting around waiting for transportation.
The RV adventure was over.
The road trip wasn’t.
We were heading toward Reykjavík for the final part of the trip, trading the RV, campgrounds and nightly negotiations over the perfect parking spot for a hotel and a few days in the city.
I had also managed to catch a cold somewhere between all the hot water and cold Icelandic air.
That would lead to a pharmacy, a flashing fuel warning, a nearly empty tank and one of those moments when Goldilocks became suspiciously quiet.
But that belongs in Part 3.
For now, we had made it around Iceland.
The RV survived.
Mostly.
And somewhere behind us was a campground full of sleeping people who had missed the show while two idiots stood outside with a cigar, whiskey and a phone pointed at a strange cloud.
One of us called it the aurora borealis.
The other one knew better.
