We spent 10 days traveling some 1800 miles around the full country of Iceland.
Iceland is a land of wonder, immense scale and a beauty that simply can not be captured in any medium. It is a land of over 200 volcanoes with over 100,000 cubic kilometers of ice in the glaciers perched on top producing spectacular waterfalls that carve the valleys and produce amazing lush grass lowlands. The scale of the land is mirrored in other aspects of the country like the seabird populations, in our drive up the east fjords swans numbered a hundred deep along a 10 mile section of the coast. The naturalist tour of Grimsey Island in the western fjords we received of an island less than a mile long that was home to a colony of over 100,000 puffins and dense populations of other birds. It is a country void of any sign of typical western style tourism and commercialism. Outside of Reykjavík there are no big box stores, no big grocery stores, strip malls, chain restaurants, and no billboards. In our ten days we hiked to hidden destinations traversing steep valley trails in all imaginable weather, drove narrow and occasionally challenging roads, counted sheep, ate dinner with cows, soaked in natural hot springs, chased down the puffins and waved back at humpback whales. Best of all, I shared those moments with the best adventure and life partner I could have ever hoped for, happy 15 year anniversary love.
