Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Iceland

 I could not even begin to pronounce this area, peninsula and national park, even if I tried!  

We decided to visit the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, northwest of Reykjavik, but first things first... we had to get our Covid tests for our return trip home.  Thankfully, my friend John had been to Iceland the week before and told me NOT to worry about this massive line.  We had appointments for rapid tests, which allowed us to bypass the line and go right inside. We were in and out in 10 minutes!  People have asked me - well, what are these people waiting for?  The US allows rapid tests for reentry, but some countries only allow molecular PCR tests.  So these are either locals trying to get tests or tourists who need the molecular PCR tests.  This line wrapped around 3 sides of this building!  I would have panicked if John hadn't told me to skip the line!

Low clouds loomed as we set off for the Snæfellsnes peninsula. The good news, is that by the time we left for the day's adventure, we already had all of our negative tests back!

Here we are in the Hvalfjörður Tunnel which is just north of Reykjavik and goes about 540 feet below sea level and a little over 3.5 miles long.  It's scary, but it takes about 45 minutes off of the trip up to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula.

The drive out here is EXTREMELY desolate and devoid of humans, especially when you get on Route 54 past Borgarnes.  Eventually, you reach Grundarfjörður - if you need gas or to go to the bathroom, stop here because there is not much else out here.  The population in this town is a little less than 900,or to put it in perspective, about 10% of the size of the town we lived in in Germany.  Just a few minutes past this town is Kirkjufell, or "Church Mountain."  Which was, of course, enshrouded in clouds when were first caught sight of it.

I took this picture from the Kirkjufellsfoss parking lot, looking out over the harbor and you can see the town of Grundarfjörður.

I think this is everyone making fun of my parking job.  Time for our daily picnic!

I know, I know.... but it's not like the parking lot was full!  The area to the left is also not even a real parking spot.

This mountain is pretty cool - it was featured in Game of Thrones!

Kirkjufell Mountain is known as Arrowhead Mountain in GoT and it's where the Night King was born.  Bran visited there, and so had Tormund and Jon Snow - when they spot it on their venture up north to find the White Walkers.  The Hound also dreamt of it!

I feel like this particular company had a ton of these vans with the motto, "Don't stink and drive!"  That or we kept seeing the same person over and over again on our travels!  This was taken in the parking lot of Kirkjufellsfoss, which sits across the road from Kirkjufell Mountain.

There is a river that comes down out of the mountains here and eventually makes its way to the falls.  In America, someone would try to build over there on the left bank (the low part of course.)

We got our first glimpse of Kirkjufellsfoss and it was beautiful!

Is this even real?  Humans for scale, naturally.

We waited patiently for a family of like, 12 to stop posting Instagram pictures of this waterfall so we could get a closer glimpse.

I always need a human for scale.  Preferably on a crumbly bridge overlooking a waterfall.

The base of Kirkjufellsfoss is on relatively flat land.  Because it sits next to "Church Mountain" - the name of this waterfall naturally translates to "Church Mountain Falls."

Me and my honey at the most (??) photographed waterfall in all of Iceland. That seems sus! There are so many waterfalls equally as beautiful!

Grantie was repping his Iceland hat - which probably makes him taller than me at this point.

Sitting 463 meters (or a little over 1,500 feet) up, Kirkjufell mountain seems more imposing than it really is since the land around it is pretty much at sea level.

I have legit concerns about this bridge and the scouring that seems to have happened here.

It's cool to see the lower part of the three level falls at ground level, which is your first left from the parking lot. But the real views come from the other side -- on the right side of the falls, if you're facing them.

Stunning.  I'm getting sad that our iPhones take better pictures than my expensive digital camera.

Maybe 20 people at Kirkjufellsfoss meant it was super easy to avoid humans, as we were trying to do.

The river runs down to the Atlantic from here, right next to it's sister mountain.  That sister always has her head in the clouds!  (Ok, bad Dad joke!)

You can get a fascinating panorama from the far side of the falls!

It honestly wasn't as cold as we are making it out to be here.  But isn't my family cute???

I am so in love with floodplains, it's scary.  You're not gonna believe this (!!) but the river Kirkjufellsá (!!!)  flows down from the volcano Helgrindur (not seen here.)

I was majorly geeking out. It's so beautiful, and the beauty of an undeveloped floodplain is why I love what I do!  (Even if most of the floodplains I deal with are fully built out!) This is what Mother Nature intended!

No, no... THIS is my future home!  Middle of nowhere, built into the side of a mountain, but not too far from a pretty floodplain.

Alas, we had to move on... and we continued on toward Ytri Tunga beach, which was on the other side of the peninsula, separated by a giant mountain that my poor rental car that had absolutely terrible brakes had to climb.  Somehow we survived! Oh hey look, another waterfall!

We finally made our way over the mountain and got to Ytri Tunga beach.  Unfortunately (and I had been warned about this) there was a dead beached whale on the shore which was quite stinky and very sad to see.

After saying a little prayer for the whale, we headed toward the rocks to try to spot some seals.  Good luck getting across the small stream by balancing on a piece of wood!

Walking out on a sandy trail to see the seals. 

At first the seals were a little hard to spot because some are the same color as the rocks!  But look at that guy just all sprawled out looking so comfy and cute!  Todd and Grant went farther out on the rocks to get a closer look.

There's a few of the lazy seals lounging around on the rocks.

There were a few seals over on the outer rocks too.  They have two types of seals that frequent the area - the Harbor Seal (or Common Seal) and the Gray Seal. The Gray Seal is bigger than the Harbor Seal, but the Harbor Seals are more common in these waters.

Females live longer than males for both seal species, with the Harbor Seal living to up to 30 years and some Gray Seals reaching up to 45 years old!

The common American female, seen here lounging on the rocks, lives to an average age of about 80.5 years.

I love this little one (and the one on the right!).  He looks like he's just having a great, relaxing day!

I am not sure who I am laughing at here!  (It's probably, "Stop taking pictures of me, Todd!")

Stay a minimum of 50 meters away from the seals (100 meters if you see pups, which I don't think we did.)

This guy was swimming around in the water! He was more active than most of the others.

Bailey's on the rocks.  Did Todd shoot this in portrait mode?

Then we decided maybe we would rather have a Bailey family selfie with actual seals in the picture!

I liked this rock, and that I could see to the ocean between it. 

Time to head back to the car - here honey, take my hand and I will help you across the log bridge.

This poor whale was very stinky, and there were so many people around it!  I wonder why Iceland doesn't dispose of the poor thing.  Maybe it's organic this way?

Alas, we made the long drive back to Reykjavik - but thankfully the rain had ended so the drive back was uneventful.  Apparently our "neighbors" had been out in the pool and - oh no! - it left a big dead ring of grass!  Hope it was fun!

Until next time, Snæfellsnes Peninsula!

Golden Circle, Iceland

I decided to break up the Golden Circle so we wouldn't have a super long day like we did yesterday.  Not that there's anything wrong with that!  But jet lag and kids and long hours spent in the car... we just couldn't!

We needed some provisions about halfway through our week, so we ran over to the Bonus to grab a few things before we headed out for the day.  If you're in Iceland and you're missing the All-American Cheesecake Factory, well - no worries! They've got you covered!

Icelandic grocery store - like most other European grocery stores!

We packed up the car and headed out again - this time, to the famous Golden Circle.  On this particular day, we decided to skip Thingvellir National Park and do it on a separate day because we were tired and wanted to sleep in a bit!  The Golden Circle is an easy day trip from Reykjavik and it hits a handful of Iceland's most famous sights.

But if you head south on Route 1, you will (at some point) come down a very windy mountain.  There is a little pull off on the right side (if you're heading south) and if the weather is right, the views are amazing.

We wanted to drive out to the farthest spot and start our day there, so we drove to Gullfoss waterfall which is about an hour and a half away from the city.  We decided to have our lunch right away, sitting in the back of the car when suddenly... a few men on horses busted into the parking lot as they were trying to wrangle some wild horses that got away from them.  The wild horses were just trotting through the parking lot of the waterfall!  So this guy circled around to go back and get them.

All the wild horses were eventually rounded up and they moseyed down the road on their merry way.  Ok, they didn't mosey- some of them were running!

This guy brought up the rear of the horse parade, making sure no one got out of line again! Boy, if I had a time for every time this happened to me.......

One of the things I had to eat on my scratch off food map was Hangikjöt (which is a smoked lamb or mutton.)  But since we weren't going out to eat much, I didn't think I was going to be able to scratch it off - because you know the rule is that I have to eat that food IN the country that I visit!  Imagine my surprise when I found it in sandwich form at the Bonus!

Just having a picnic in the back of the car, absolutely killing it.

Might be Grant under all that hair, hat and mask... might not be.

Gullfoss has a large visitor's center that you pass to get to the falls - and this was our first view of Gullfoss! Whoa!

The Hvítá (or "White") River feeds into Gullfoss and there is a dramatic three step staircase that has two waterfalls between them.  Above, you can see two of those "stairs." The bottom of the stairs is down in the gorge below.

My little buddy at Gullfoss. Someday, we will teach him how to smile with his eyes open.

We have been pretty lucky to see some amazing rainbows in these waterfalls because we have had SUN on this trip!  

Gullfoss means "Golden Waterfall" - although it didn't look golden at all to me. They believe it's called this because it's sometimes a golden color due to it's glacial origins, although some believe it's called this because of the rainbows people often see in the spray (Ha!  See the picture above and below this one!)

Humans are on the far left side under the rainbow, for scale.

You can walk beneath the spray to get over to the lookout and get a fantastic close-up view of the falls.

Cliff edge is unsecure. Sure, I feel safe!

Here you can see the falls make their last drop into the gorge. According to Icelandtravel.is (a great website, by the way), "Gullfoss is the largest volume falls in Europe, with the average flow being 1400 m³/s in the summertime and 80 m³/s in the wintertime. The highest flood measured is 2000 m³/s." Say WHAT?  Superlative, check!

The sound of this rushing water is VERY loud.

World of Waterfalls put Gullfoss on its World Top 10 List of Waterfalls!

Gullfoss is about 32 meters, or about 105 feet from the top down to the crevice (or is this a crevasse?) 

Much like at Seljalandsfoss, you might get a tad wet due to the spray from the falls.  It wasn't as bad as Seljalandsfoss though. Put your hoodie up and plow on through.

Hey!  Their eyes might be open!  You can get super close to Gullfoss down at the view point.

After we hiked back up the hill, and then back up 100 steps to the path to the visitor's center, Natalie had had enough, so Todd, Grant and I went to the upper viewpoint which is even higher up! And the rainbow was still glowing!  The views up here were spectacular and all encompassing.

GRANT.  I can't even. Also:  Todd - the only person to ever get a sunburn in Iceland.

After our visit to the falls, Todd drove us about 10-15 minutes down the road which takes you over the Tungufljót River where there are plenty of salmon and trout among the rapids.

Our next stop was a geothermal geyser area! Here, there are two famous geysers - one currently active geyser called Strokkur and one inactive geyser called Geysir - which is where the English word comes from!

That's roughly 175F to 215F.  That will burn you, quickly.

Strokkur is Icelandic for "churn."  It erupts about every 5 minutes, although sometimes it's more or less frequent than that.

Whoa!  That is AWESOME!!!!!!

They key to taking good pictures is to watch for the bubble (which you can see erupting here) and then snap, snap, snap!

The water is very blue when it erupts!  Meanwhile, there are many other colors around the such as white for sulfur and and orange-red color for iron, both of which are minerals that come up here from deep in the earth.

I also like the mini tidal wave it creates when it erupts!

It's like Todd is holding Strokkur geyser up with his finger!

There's more to see than Strokkur - if you head up the hill, you will find Blesi!  This hot spring is beautiful - clear, yet colorful.

On average, Strokkur is a bit smaller than Old Faithful in Wyoming.  However, it erupts more frequently. Old Faithful apparently (according to signs around Strokkur) erupts every 30-100 minutes, but Strokkur is about every 5-8 minutes.  It's a bit shorter though, at 25-35 meters (compared to 25-55 meters with Old Faithful.)   

Meanwhile, over in the corner is Geysir.  Since it's inactive, it's generally not as crowded here. "The geyser is dormant. Eruptions are rare."  Earthquakes tend to make Geysir a bit more active, but we certainly didn't feel any when we were there.

Although our pal Geysir is in an inactive period, it last erupted in February of 2016.  Phew!

Bailey family with the OG geyser.  Notice someone took my sunglasses.

It might be dormant, but the geyserite shows plenty of white silica, and it's obviously piping hot!

Here is a close up of the edge of Geysir with a few homes in the distance.

If I didn't tell you, you might not know that there was water here.  It's hard to get a good picture of Blesi the hot spring when it's letting off so much steam!  And let me tell you - that steam is STINKY.  There's a deep smell of sulfur here at the geysers and hot springs!

Next, we were off to Kerid Crater! 

You can walk around the caldera of this volcanic lake in about 15 minutes - so it's a quick, easy and beautiful stop.  This is one of the few things you have to pay for but it's only about $3 USD, and they charge this because this lake is on private land.

Kerid is one of the baby volcanoes of Iceland, since it's only about 3,000 years old.  It's about 180 feet deep (so don't roll down that hill!)

It's thought that this was a cone shaped volcano 3,000 years ago - and it emptied it's belly of magma, thereby caving in on itself.  No one really knows though, since there were no people here at the time.

Why are my children the ones closest to the edge here??  Notice I'm trying to give my hand to Natalie (JUST HOLD MY HAND SO YOU DON'T ROLL BACKWARDS DOWN THE VOLCANO!)  Man, I'm terrified of heights!

I always say this, but Todd takes a nice panorama photo.  He must have a steadier hand than I do!

OK, we aren't as close to the edge here, phew.  The lake that formed here is about 15-20 feet deep.

I took this picture of Todd and the kids about 75% done with the walk around the crater.  There are such beautiful views in all directions.

One last picture of the Kerid Crater.  You can walk down to the water (beach?) but you cannot swim here!

After a relatively easy and fun day touring the Golden Circle, we went back to the apartment in Reykjavik and watched a couple more episodes of a show we started here in Iceland - the History Channel's Vikings series.  It's so good!  Skál!