This morning we got up and around fairly quickly, since the campsite had no shower, but the nicest toilets so far, getting ready didn’t take too long. We had decided to go into town to wander around a bit, but arrived a little too early as not much was open, except for a bakery and a couple shops. We each got a pastry and Nick enjoyed a nice hot coffee and then we meandered in and out a few of the shops, which were your normal souvenir shops, except for one which had some really cool items (scarfs, cute little sheep tchotchkes, and an adorable hand knitted Viking cap), but unfortunately all this cuteness was out of my budget. Not quite understanding the cities parking situation and whether we had to pay (we never did find anywhere to pay though) we headed back to the car and set off, in the wrong direction. Prior to me inputting our destination Nick had taken a right onto the road and the directions routed us that way, completely out of our way. Thankfully about 30 mins down the road, out in the middle of farm country Nick said something and we realized the mistake. So back to the same place where we just drove from we went, all the way past our campsite, and finally we were on our way. I’d love to say it was a pretty detour, but it was just bunch of open fields with cows and sheep. I mean it was pretty, but the correct route was even prettier. Today’s forecast was overcast but happy that it was not raining like yesterday.  Nick had looked up last night a place where there was supposed to be seal sightings, so we chanced it driving up into the peninsula,   Skagasrond, to see not one single seal. We have learned our lesson to finally quite driving out of the way chasing wildlife, because they are bound not to be there. Regardless there was a lighthouse up there and a beautiful sail boat and just us! The other bonus was that we happened upon some Icelandic horses who were very close to the road on our drive, so I hopped out and had a small photo shoot with them, while Nick watched from the car due to his allergies.

After our failed seal sightings, we made our way back down and since we are still a day or so ahead of schedule decided to take a little detour off route 1 to see Hvitserkur, a rock formation within the sea that is often referred to as a dragon drinking from the sea. While nothing too awfully exciting to see, it was a great break from the car. We climbed (I crab walked) our way down the mountain to the ocean and got a little closer look. The walk along the beach was rugged at times due to the large stones, but the black sand was beautiful and again it was just great to be stretching out legs.

Back in the car again, we stopped after a bit at gas station to gas up and see if we could find the ever famous Icelandic hot dogs, and we did! This was one of nicest gas stations that we had found and there was a line for the hot dogs, so they must be good, right? Well, they were, they tasted like ours but better and had a snap to them, which is always good. We ate our hot dogs on our way out to the Snaefellsnes – Iceland’s western most peninsula, little did we know most of the roads out here are F roads and at times I questioned whether or not we were going to go air born, it was touch and go for awhile. I quietly prayed to myself that we would not be making that insurance policy deposit when we returned. Nick and I laughed how we hadn’t seen a Prius yet, I’m sure those poor little guys would jiggle themselves apart in no time.

Along our route, out to what Nick is referring to as Snuffalupagus peninsula, we saw beautiful islands to our right only to turn around and see humongous mountains behind us, it was so breathtaking and unfortunately I don’t think pictures will do it justice. We feared we would miss one of the highlights on our route as Waze could not locate it, but thankfully as we turned the corner there it was, the beautiful Kirkjukfell mountain, an iconic mountain as labeled on one of our maps and just a short drive down the road was the Kirkjufellfoss waterfall. This was a great way to end our long day of driving. We headed to the nearby town, Olafsvik. We initially drove right past the site as there no signs and we were too in awe of the ridiculous boat that was sitting at the edge of town to welcome you. Granted these towns aren’t big at all but after driving around a bit we spotted it down below the mountain we were on top of. As we got down to it and started unpacking I remembered reading somewhere that this site smelled a little fishy due to the fish processing plant close by, let’s just say they didn’t get that fact wrong 😁