On the morning of Day 2, Jordan and I both woke up refreshed and feeling ready to tackle the day. After showers, skyr and fruit for breakfast, and one more walk on the beach, it was time to hit the road again. This was going to be our longest day of driving at about 6 hours in the car to Egilsstaðir. Luckily we had the whole day to make it to our hotel, the weather was great, we had a long playlist of songs for the drive, and Jordan and I just generally enjoy spending time together in the car!
We found a whole bunch of places to stop, some were planned and some we just spontaneously decided to pull over and explore. One of the first places we stopped was a mossy lava field and Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon. Both of them were within a couple miles of each other and provided amazing places to explore and walk around!
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| This landscape was so unreal. |
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| I loved the texture on the volcanic rock. |
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| I had never seen anything like this before. |
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| And this awesome landscape extended for miles! |
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| I'm into it. |
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| Figuring out the selfie stick! :) |
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| There we go! At Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon. |
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| One more. |
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| Okay, actually, one more. |
We got back into the car for our next destination: Diamond Beach! This is another black sand beach along the lagoon near Breiðamerkurjökull, a glacier in south east Iceland that's right along the coast. Pieces of glacial ice break off into the lagoon and float out into the ocean, and it was so beautiful to see the white and blue ice chunks. We saw a seal while we were there too!
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| This sand was super fine! |
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| Again, I love the pattern and texture! |
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| Tons of cool rocks and shells. |
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| Aww, icy love. |
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| The selfie stick is back! |
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| Awwww <3 |
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| Check out the blue ice! |
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| So beautiful. |
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| The view into the lagoon. |
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| Yay for us! |
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| More beach exploring... |
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| and conquering ice! |
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| Love it! |
Our next stops were pretty random. One of the things I loved in Iceland were the huge fields of purple lupine everywhere. It's an invasive species which has caused problems with the environment, but I have to admit they were lovely. And the further east we traveled, the fewer cars and tourists we encountered. Around Reykjavik and along the southern edge of Iceland is where most of the famous tourist landmarks are, and it was fun to get into the lesser-known parts of the country. Oh, and we found a random red chair that was just begging for a photo op so of course we needed to check that out too.
The sun came out just as we came upon a beautiful cliff overlooking the ocean and a beach so, of course, we needed to get out for another photo op! Finally, when we were a couple hours away from Egilsstaðir, our GPS told us that there was traffic or some sort of road block ahead and suggested we take a detour. This proved to be very exciting as we were taken onto a single-lane gravel road into the mountains for almost an hour, climbing up into the fog and through lots of twists, turns, and sheep!
Around 7pm, we made it to the hotel in Egilsstaðir. We stayed here:
Lake Hotel Egilsstaðir. We were pretty exhausted so we settled into our room, ate an amazing dinner at the restaurant in the hotel, and had another early night to bed!
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| The view was pretty much beautiful the whole day! |
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| So purple... |
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| ... so pretty! |
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| Practicing my senior photo poses. |
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| Hello, lonely red chair. |
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| We're pretty adorable, right? |
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| Yep, we're adorable. |
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| Another panoramic view! |
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| Blue skies! |
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| Heading off-road into the unknown! |
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| Luckily, we had sheep to keep us company. |
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There were so many baby sheep with their mamas!
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| These little waterfalls were lovely. |
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| Dinner at the hotel was delicious! |
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| And, of course, two desserts! Hey, we're on vacation. |
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