On our third day in Iceland, we rented a car to set out and see as much of the southern part of the country as possible. We went ahead and paid extra for the full coverage insurance-all my research about Iceland showed that this was a good investment, since there's so much that can go wrong while driving. In addition to the usual haphazards, you can experience sand storms (with black sand!), snowy roads and hail storms with ice as hard as rocks.
Our goal was to make it to the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon (Glacier Park). This place has hundreds of broken peices from the largest glacier in Iceland called Vatnajökull. The peices break off and travel to this lagoon and then travel farther downstream. The glacier park was about 3-4 hours away from Reykjavik. So we had slept in, picked up our rental car, loaded up our bags, bought plenty of snacks and we were on our way.
Driving in Iceland isn't too different from driving anywhere else. The speed limit is somewhat slower than what I'm used to, but other than that it's pretty easy. We did splurge on the gps for the car which was worth every single penny ($10/day) so we didn't have to use our data on our phones and the gps had all the Icelandic street names. There is only one main highway in Iceland-it's called the number 1. So fairly easy to navigate around the country.
We made a pit stop in the nearby town of Selfoss at the Bonus Grocery Store. Their mascot is a pig and it reminded me of the "Spider Pig" from the Simpsons movie-or maybe I was just missing my best friend Miss Delia who is an avid Simpsons fan. It was important that we stocked up on groceries because the tiny mountain cabin we had booked for the night specifically said there were no stores nearby and we'd need to bring our own meal supplies. We decided on grilled cheese tomato sandwiches.
Our first stop on our road trip, was about 1.5 hours away from the city and it was the gorgeous waterfall called Seljalandsfoss. What made this waterfall so fantastic was the fact that you can walk BEHIND the falls and it's also located right off highway (very similar to Montahnomah Falls in Oregon).
I love, love, loved this waterfall. Everything about it made me happy. It has so much power-you hear the pounding of the falls from the parking lot.
Also, this was the first time I've ever walked behind a waterfall and it gave me this sense of awe looking at the water from the other side.
It was a very short walk to the waterfall and very small hike up and around to the other side. It was however, was very muddy.
We made the mistake of wearing our trainers instead of our new Viking galoshes. Whoops. The waterfall was spraying and we ended up a huge wet muddy mess. But you know what? We were all smiles. We laid our wet jackets on the back seat and put on our dry shoes laughing as we drove onto the next place.
Our next stop, was only a few miles down the road at the Skógafoss waterfall. This one is also very easily accessible from the 1 highway with a very short walk. This waterfall was also very loud and full of power. The closer you got to the base of the falls the wetter the mist.
We were almost halfway to our cabin and since it was now 1pm we decided it best to go check in before heading to the glacier lagoon. We stopped to get gas at the next station we passed. I had read online that it's best to gas up (even if you're not on empty) whenever you pass a gas station. You never know when you'll get to another one or if it will be open. Also, most gas stations make you use something like a gift card to pump gas.
We drove two hours towards our cabin. It was the best drive of my life. We would drive for miles and not see a single car, person or even an animal! It made us feel like we had the entire country to ourselves (and we might have gone over the speed limit). The scenery of the drive kept you on the edge of your seat.
You never knew what you were going to see next. We also saw lots of Icelandic horses and birds galore. Not to mention the black sand beaches!! (Side note: while Super Nel was driving a rock hit and chipped the windshield. Boy were we happy we had the full coverage insurance at that point!)
Two hours later, we arrived in the teenyweenytiny town of Hof. So small, that it rarely shows up on most maps. There were no more than 10-15 houses in this village. There are no grocery stores or businesses in this town with the exception of a very small hotel. The nearest store is one hour away in each direction! It was EXACTLY what we had been hoping for. We wanted to sleep under the stars, away from the city, enjoying every bit of the scenic nature southern Iceland had to offer. Our cabin was one of three small huts.
When you reserve your cabin online through Nónhamar (name of company) you pick a 4 digit code and that's the code to the lock box when you show up.
Our cabin had 2 bunk beds, blankets and linen, towels for the small bathroom, and a small kitchen and table. We parked our car right outside the door and the view from our porch was gorgeous. And in the afternoon all these beautiful birds gather out front on the open grass.
If you looked out the bathroom window, you could see the snow up the mountain (hard to see from the photo)
After we unloaded and made our beds, we set off towards the glacier lagoon. Our cabin was only 15-20 minutes from the lagoon so we were there by 4pm.
The winds were picking up and it was pretty cold but that didn't stop us from from exploring this phenomenal place.
Super Nel holds a peice of glacier.
The ice was freeeezing cold!!!
This one has a hole in it!
Super Nel is all smiles because this place is wonderful!
A huge peice of glacier.
That black dot is a bird-we saw so many native birds we'd never seen before.
The Little Superheroes take a ride on a peice of glacier.
While we were there, we spotted a couple shooting photos with a professional photographer. The girl was in a dress and looked FREEZING COLD!! But those photos will look on point though!
We could not get enough of the Glacier Park. We didn't want to leave. We ended up driving to Hoft-a town known as the Lobster Capitol of Iceland. We had some delicious lobster (really, really tasty).
Then we drove BACK to the Glacier Park to enjoy the sunset with the glaciers.
Can you find Super Nel hiding in this photo?
It was hard to drive away from this place, but we wanted to get to our cabin before it became completely dark. It's somewhat hard to drive in the dark in Iceland. The roads are really small and when another car is coming you hope they turn off their high beams and pray you don't go off the road.
When we arrived at our cabin, a strange thing happened. We kept hearing this weird mechanical whistling. It honestly sounded like a child's helicopter toy was hovering above us. The sound kept moving, we never heard it from the same place two times in a row. At first we didn't think anything of it, we just kept trying to see where the sound was coming from, but we had no luck. So we were sitting in our cabin, periodically looking outside hoping to see the Northern Lights and still hearing the mechanical whistling sound when all of a sudden the lights go out in our cabin. When we looked outside, we saw that all the lights were off in all the houses of Hof. And then we heard the mechanical whistling sound again. We might have freaked out a little and decided to jump in the car and go look for the Northern Lights.
And we weren't disappointed-about 5 minutes away from our cabin we saw the glow of the green in the sky.
The Northern Lights were dancing on top of the mountain in the sky and they were worth the wait. We were so excited to see them we stopped the car, jumped outside to stare at the beauty.
By this point, we were pretty tired so we drove back to our cabin in hopes that the power had been restored (it was) and fell fast asleep. When I woke up the next morning, I reminded Super Nel that we wanted to get an early start back towards town so we could stop at some other places we'd seen along the way. I decided to take a quick shower.
Now, so far on this trip, I had been really, really good about NOT losing my wedding band (yea me!). We had purposefully left the engagement ring at home just in case. My biggest flaw is that I insist on taking my rings off to wash my hands. I just don't like the way it feels when I wash my hands with the rings on. Darius had warned me that I was bound to lose my wedding band in Europe if I insisted on washing my hands without it on. So I worked really hard to always wash my hands with my wedding band on-and I was really successful. But I just couldn't bring myself to wear it in the shower. So when I got out of the shower in our little mountain cabin in Iceland, the first thing I did was reach for my wedding band on the small ledge above the sink.....and it somehow managed to fall off the ledge and to my horror it fell down the drain. Of course the one time it falls in the sink it's in a sink with no drain stopper. I started screaming and poor Super Nel, who was still fast asleep, jumped out of bed afraid I'd been hurt only to find me looking down the drain at my beautiful wedding band. I could see it in the pipe way, way down. We tried using a string with duct tape attached in hopes of bringing it out of the pipe with no luck. Super Nel had the idea of using our clothes line that had a hook at the end to grab it, but that also didn't work. We didn't know what to do and I was so sad knowing I'd made it so far in the trip without losing my ring and this is how it would get lost.
Find out if I come home with my wedding band or if it lives in a pipe in a mountain cabin in Iceland forever in the next blog post....
The Viking decor of our hotel. 
