Iceland for our 21st Anniversary!

At the end of May, Dustin and I took a much anticipated 20th anniversary trip (on our 21st anniversary) to Iceland!  We had purchased tickets in early 2021 to celebrate our 20th anniversary, and were supposed to leave in August, but we got exposed to Covid in the junior high carpool and had to cancel our trip 4 days before we were supposed to leave.  It was very disappointing, but we were able to cancel everything and get our money back.  Fast forward to March of 2022 where we rescheduled almost the exact same trip, with the same tours and most of the same hotels, but this time we would leave at the end of May, before the big Covid surge from school starting again, as happened last year.  Or so we thought.  Who knew that there would be another variant that would hit in May??  We couldn't have guessed, but as Covid has taught us, we have to be flexible and resilient.  As it happened, I ended up getting Covid about two weeks before we were supposed to leave, and Dustin got it a few days later, with just the exact right amount of time to be cleared for travel on the day we were supposed to leave.  

The day before we left, I woke up with pain in my stomach that got continually worse as the day went on.  By 5:00 pm, I was in a lot of pain and we decided that we should go to the ER to make sure it wasn't an appendicitis or a gallbladder problem, since we were leaving at 7:45 the next morning.  Dustin gave me a blessing and blessed me that I would get better, and that I would recognize that it was because of the Priesthood and that I would be able to testify of it.  A little bit of a different kind of blessing than I expected, but ok!  We went to the ER, and after doing an x-ray, ultra sound and MRI, they determined that all my organs were fine and they sent me home with a bunch of acid reducing medicine and pain medicine.  We came home, I went to bed and slept fitfully and woke up in the morning, still in pain.  Our first flight was to Denver, so after praying about it and feeling peaceful about moving forward, we left for the airport for our flight to Denver, knowing that if I didn't get better, we could always come home from there instead of going on to Iceland.  My stomach was in pain all the way to the airport and then, as I got out of the van to get my bags, I felt no pain.  And it was noticeable.  Grabbed the bags out of the back, still no pain.  Said goodbye to our girls, not hurting.  What??  I had taken a pain medicine that morning and it must have kicked in and stopped the pain, but I had taken one the night before at the ER and it hadn't stopped the pain then.  We felt like it was a total miracle.  We had moved forward in faith, trying to be prayerful the whole time, and we felt like the Lord performed a miracle for us.  The pain medicine definitely made me feel dizzy and nauseous (ask all the people in the security line around us, as I kept having to sit down on the floor so I didn't pass out as we moved through the line), and I was super careful about what I ate for a couple of days, but the pain never returned, even when I stopped taking the medicine that first night.  We were humbly grateful for this miracle.

Waiting in the airport, pain free and not passed out on the floor (just slightly pale).

Day 1

We arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland around 6:45 A.M. on Sunday and grabbed our bags, rented our car and headed off toward the city.  We had bought a Rick Steve's Iceland book previously, and it had mapped out a walking tour of the city.  So we walked the city to fight off exhaustion (it was around midnight, Utah time).  And, it is a beautiful city!  At 8:00 on a Sunday morning, there are almost no people out and so we had it pretty much to ourselves.

Lots of brightly painted buildings and streets.

A cream cheese danish for breakfast.

Church started at 11:00, so we found where they meet and changed in the bathrooms (as other tourists were also doing).  One thing I absolutely love about being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is that anywhere in the world where we have gone to church, we feel like we are among friends.  It was no different in Iceland.  Such nice people!  So many missionaries! (8 companionships).  They translate their services into English, Spanish, Icelandic and Russian, depending on who is speaking.  We loved being there.

After church we went back to the city and visited the Hallgrimskirkja, the famous church in the center of town.  We were able to walk around inside and also go up into the bell tower, where there are great views of the city.

The bells went off while we were in the tower and it scared us so bad!

Dandelions are one of the few varieties of flowers that we saw there, and they let them grow!

That afternoon, we checked into our hotel, took a 45 minute nap and then started on a road trip of the Golden Circle.  Iceland scenery is amazing.  There are green valleys, farmer's fields and waterfalls on one side of the road,

And moss covered lava rock on the other.  It is really beautiful, no matter which side you are looking at!

We arrived at the Thingvellir National Park and hiked along a gorge to our first waterfall-Oxarafoss.

We continued on the Golden Circle, loving the farms with adorable sheep and tons of baby lambs and the Icelandic horses!

Our next stop was Gullfoss (Foss means waterfall).  It was huge, powerful and beautiful!  And, in Iceland, they let you get right up next to it.  This was one of my favorite waterfalls that we saw.

After getting lost a couple of times, and making our way around the Golden Circle, it was getting late.  The sun was setting, kind of--it was 11:00 P.M. and technically it did set, but it didn't get far below the horizon and it never got dark.  We made one more quick stop at the Kerio Crater.  We were exhausted from lack of sleep and my having been sick a couple of days before.  Our phones were dead and our USB port in the car wasn't working.  Thank goodness for our Rick Steves' Iceland book!  It guided us back to Reykjavik and we finally made it to our hotel at 12:30 A.M. after a long, exhausting, foggy, silly drive, where we did not fall asleep at the wheel!  Success!

Reykjavik at 12:30 at night.

Day 2

We had to wake up at 7:00 the next morning to eat and get on the road for our next stop.  The breakfast was delicious (I love European breakfasts) and we were feeling slightly more rested and ready for the day.

We had tickets to go to the Blue Lagoon Hot Springs and Spa in the morning.

Free face masks and a drink were provided.

It was so beautiful and relaxing!  And with the weird conversion amounts on money (there are 128.5 Icelandic krona for every 10 U.S. dollars) we happily enjoyed our spa day without realizing how much we had spent!  Ignorance is bliss!  Haha!

Since we were so close to the airport again, we decided to stop in at the Rental Car company and ask about our non working USB (we really need GPS in Iceland!).  They switched our car, no questions asked, and so we were quickly back on the road, with a nicer car and a working USB port so that we could charge our phones with and use their provided wifi hub and not get lost in Iceland.

  
We took the southern route along Iceland (Hwy 427) to get to our next destination (really, the whole Island is a destination--everything is so beautiful), and we stopped at a cute little fishing village called Grindavik.  They had a quaint little church with a very nice teeter totter (we tried it out and worked wonderfully).

We were also able to get a close up of the Icelandic horses.  They have curly manes and tails and are a little shorter and smaller than regular horses.  They look like punk rock horses!

Driving and loving the varied scenery.

Another cute church, in Olfus.

Fairy houses

Our next stop was the Seljalandsfoss waterfall.  For the first time, we were able to use all that waterproof clothing that we had bought for the trip.  Yay!  We also finally remembered to pull out the selfie stick I had bought, and as I suspected, Dustin was in love with it.  

This waterfall was cool because you could hike right up around the back side of it.  Which was very cold and wet, but really fun.  (And we had waterproof clothes, so what did we care if we got wet!)

There was a short trail from that waterfall to a couple of other waterfalls.  This was the only place I remember there being bugs...

And this was another one of our favorite waterfalls.  We felt like we had found a hidden treasure inside this little cave walkway.

Once again, loving those waterproof clothes.

There was a roadside stand where we bought a super soft Icelandic wool blanket, and then we took one of the most beautiful drives of our lives toward Vik.  So. Incredibly. Beautiful.

We stopped at a hobbit house we saw on the side of the road.  These are manmade caves and there are a couple hundred of them all over Iceland.  

The level of light night was deceiving.  We had read that it was easy to miss the hours of operation for restaurants and stores because even though it is light outside, they still close at normal hours.  We decided we better stop for dinner somewhere along the road because it was close to 9:00 P.M. (even though it didn't feel like it at all) and we still had a ways to go before our final destination for the night at Vik.  So we found this fun (and expensive!) restaurant right next to a huge waterfall, Skogafoss.  We debated exploring the falls, also, but knew we wouldn't have enough time, so we just had dinner and decided to come back the next day.  I had an Icelandic beef hamburger and fries, and Dustin had leg of lamb.  Both delicious.

Then, on to Vik and sleep!

Day 3

We started off the next morning from Guesthouse Carina, in Vik.  We had a delicious breakfast and a nice chat with the owners.  Everyone is so kind in Iceland!

There was a cute church in Vik, so we explored there for a minute.

And then went on to Dyrholaey.  Dyrholaey has amazing views of black sand beaches, cool rock formations in the ocean, granite rock caves and puffins!  Dustin had seeing puffins at the top of his bucket list for Iceland (and eating one... but he gave that one up).  They were everywhere on the rocks at Dyrholaey!  We were so excited!

This was the coldest spot that we visited in Iceland!  And SO windy!  I stayed far from the edge of the cliff.

Everyone was excited about puffins!

Our next stop was back at Skogafoss (where we had eaten dinner the night before).  There was a fun hike that led to the top and then along the ridge for quite a long time.  We walked up 429 steps to get to some awesome views and more waterfalls!

Grateful again for our waterproof clothes investment!

We did a quick stop at the Solheimajokull Glacier.  The black on the glacier is ash from the last volcano eruption.  Iceland has a volcano erupt on average every 5 years!

Next was Reynisfjara!  This was on my Iceland bucket list.  Basalt columns with black sand beaches and cool rock formations.  So beautiful!  There were models there doing a photo shoot, so I'm surprised we were even able to get a picture of it without people in it!  Apparently it is a place with sneaker waves, so we watched out for those.  No accidental swim of death in the freezing North Atlantic Ocean for us!

I got a model in this shot.

We were pretty freezing after that area, so we found a soup restaurant in nearby Vik and had a delicious dinner before we started for our next destination: Kirkjubaejarklausturi.  I dare you to try and say that one!  At the restaurant, I had lava soup in a black bread bowl.  Dustin had a pita with Icelandic yogurt.  Both were super yummy. We loved how everywhere we went, they offered a decanter of Icelandic water with our meal.  Then they don't have to come refill our cups over and over!  Genius!

We drove on that night to Kirkjubaejarklausturi and stayed at Hotel Laki.

Day 4

We woke up to a light drizzle of rain and a delicious breakfast.  The lady at the front desk gave us four great things to try and see near Kirkjubaejarklausturi (that is a huge word to type over and over!  I'll shorten it to K. if I have to use it again.  haha!)

The first was a canyon called Fjadrargljufur.  I kind of feel like I'm spelling that word wrong...hahahaha!

This was one of my very favorite places that we visited.  I may have already said that about everything else, but this canyon was seriously so beautiful!  The water was so blue and the canyon was so green.  We hiked up to the top of the canyon and they had a lovely path marked off with ropes and viewing platforms where you could safely observe 300+ foot cliffs without fear of falling to your death.  You can see in many of these pictures where people have ignored the ropes and created their own paths, right up to the edge, to get that perfect picture.  I had so many great life/gospel lessons going through my head during this hike, about commandments and laws and protection by obeying them.  Someday I will give that awesome lecture to my kids and use this example.   

I'm happy to have my guard rail, thank you very much.

Apparently this is a problem here??

Our next place on the list was Stjornafoss.  This was a smaller, but wide waterfall near the main village.  We stopped for just a few minutes.  And no one else was there!

Just down the road from Stjornafoss was a sign for basalt columns in the ground, so we did a quick walk over to the monument.  

         At another place, Systrafoss, we found a forest in Iceland!  These 60,000 trees were planted in 1949 as part of a government funded effort to re-forest Iceland.  It was one of the few places we found trees!  

Iceland supposedly has above average hot dogs, so we decided to try them for lunch this day.  The hot dog itself was good, but what was fun was that there were tons of options for sauces for the hot dog.  We tried them all!

The drive from Kirkjubaejarklauster to Hofn was so beautiful!!

The tongues of the glacier coming down were kind of awe inspiring.  It looks like an avalanche coming down.

After a volcano erupted, the entire roadway was destroyed by the flooding from the glacier.  This is a remnant of the old road.

We stopped at the Fagurholsmyri National Park on our way to Hofn.  There was a fun hike to some beautiful waterfalls and great lookouts of the glacier.  We were almost entirely by ourselves on our hike back down the mountain, and I would have been afraid of cougars or bears if I was back in Utah, but in Iceland, the most dangerous predator is the arctic fox!  And that just seems too cute to be scary.  (We did see an arctic fox on our last night of driving.  It was running through a field, looking awfully cute as it hunted its prey)

At Vik, I had bought a bunch of treats for our car ride and to take home to the kids.  These were paprika flavored cheeto-like rings (and other shapes).  Not bad!

As we drove along, we suddenly passed a beautiful lake, full of icebergs!  Glacier Lagoon!  We hadn't realized we were so close and it was such a cool surprise to come upon it.  We got out and did a quick look (we knew we were coming back the next day to tour it) and then drove across the road to Diamond Beach.  Diamond Beach was on the top of my list of things I wanted to see, and I'm not going to lie, it was a little disappointing that first day.  As another tourist put it to us while we were standing there, "Everything else has looked just like Pinterest said it would, except for this place."  This was at about 6:00 at night and the tide was going out and most of the diamonds on the beach were about the size of an actual diamond.  But we got some pretty pictures anyway, and then headed on to Hofn for the night.

The icebergs being pushed out toward the sea.

Beautiful black sand beaches.

We drove on and made it to our next stop for the night, Hofn.  We ate dinner that night at Pakkhus Restaurant.  Everything that looked delicious was expensive, so we counted this as our Anniversary dinner (the next day was our aniversary) and just enjoyed the delicious food.  And tried not to think about the cost.  Haha!  Hofn is famous for their langoustine, which is a small lobster.  So, Dustin had a langoustine leg meal and I had langoustine soup. It was super yummy and the bread and butter were amazing, as well.

And we got a fancy mousse dessert.  It's supposed to look like a volcano.

After dinner we wandered around Hofn for a bit.  It was late (probably around 10:00 P.M.) but there was still plenty of light for us to see and enjoy the town.

Hofn is a harbor town, so we sat by the harbor and watched the ocean for a bit.  There were cats all around us.  We read somewhere cats are welcome to wander in Iceland, but that dogs were banned until the 1980's.  So there were almost no dogs everywhere we went (we only saw 2), but there were a lot of cats!

We stayed that night in Hotel Jokull, right outside of Hofn.  It was probably the nicest hotel we stayed at.  And we enjoyed it by relaxing and watching English game shows on tv and then going to bed, exhausted.

Day 5

We got up the next morning and had another delicious European style breakfast and then started back toward Glacier Lagoon and Diamond Beach.  

We had a Lagoon Tour that morning and it was fun to ride around the lake and get a closer view of the icebergs.  We had people from France, Spain, China and America on our tour, and our tour guide was from France and did the tour in English.  Not knowing Icelandic was never a problem there.  Everyone spoke nearly perfect English. 

                                        

I don't know if these pictures do justice to how beautiful the colors of the glaciers and the lake were.  It was pretty amazing.

After our tour we went back to Diamond Beach and this time, it looked like Pinterest said it would!  The night before, everything must have melted by the time we got there and this time, there was a fresh batch of icebergs that had washed up on shore.

We ate some lunch (sandwiches, chips and chocolate milk from the little store there) and then relaxed and napped in the car for about an hour before we were supposed to meet up with our tour guide from the tour of the glacier.  But we waited and waited and looked and asked people and called and could never find our tour guide.  (Here's the truck we thought we would be riding in).  Finally, about 10 minutes after we were supposed to have started, there was a guy in the store with a jacket on with the name of our tour (Blue Iceland) and so we talked to him and he was our guide!  It was not a very well managed beginning, but we made it, just in the nick of time! We drove 15 minutes out of town and met up with the rest of our group and then we did drive in a big truck for 30 minutes of some crazy off roading until we got to the place were we would start our hike towards the glacier. 

We got our gear on (crampons, harness, hardhat and ax) and then hiked 30 minutes in to reach the glacier.

Once we got to the glacier, our tour guide had lots of interesting information.  We hiked all over it for about an hour and then hiked back to the truck and then drove back to our cars.

The black all over the glacier is ash from different volcanos erupting over the years.

Yes, we did drink the melting glacier water.  It was delicious and so cold!

The glacier is melting fast!  They said it melts back about 3 feet per day! 

It was a fun adventure to hike all over the glacier!

After our tour ended, we started back toward Reykjavik.  Once again, it was a beautiful drive and even though we'd seen it, it was so hard not to take a million pictures again!  We also found a different glacier lagoon and stopped for a quick minute to take some pictures.

More driving pictures

We made a quick stop for dinner at a gas station/restaurant in Fagurholsmyri and we pet the local Icelandic horses and then shared some cod for dinner.

We stopped in Vik long enough for me to use the bathroom at a random restaurant and for us to drive down and walk along the beautiful beach.  We hadn't done that on our day in Vik earlier in the week.  It was gorgeous.  And, it was our 21st anniversary that day!  Happy Anniversary to us!

Such a beautiful ending to the southern coast of Iceland!

We stayed that night at a hotel somewhere between Vik and Reykjavik, had a yummy breakfast the next morning and then made it back to Reykjavik where we spent a few hours shopping for souvenirs and eating the most delicious cod I've ever eaten.

Breakfast at the hotel.

We utilized every random piece of equipment that we bought for the trip!  This is the waterproof backpack cover.

I almost dared use this public water closet (bathroom), but in the end, it was just too gross.

Delicious lunch!

Our flight left that afternoon, so we drove back to the airport, returned our rental car and started our journey back home!  Because we had both had Covid a couple of weeks earlier, we didn't have to have a negative test, we just had to show them our doctor's note saying that we were cleared for travel.  that made returning to the U.S. a little easier.

We had a beautiful view of Greenland on our flight home.

We got home that night and our kids picked us up from the airport.  It was so nice to be back home with them!  But it was such a lovely week in Iceland!  We are grateful for this beautiful earth and the chance to see new parts of it!