We slept pretty well last night, we are getting more used to the bed and especially to the smaller size of the bed. We (well me) are not big fans of the bedding we have, the duvets are thick, but they are inside a cover, we assume for protection, and they are like wrestling an alligator. They move around inside the cover like having a small pillow inside a large pillowcase. They are also heavy, and since I am on the outside, mine often falls off over the side of the bed if I roll over in that direction. Maybe we will consider taking them out of the covers.
The campground was pretty full, and we thought that getting access to the bathrooms this morning would be an issue, but I guess we were lucky. There are two stalls in the men’s restroom, and two urinals, which helps. There are four stalls on the women’s side, and both sides have two showers each. Apparently, the hot water for the showers had been fixed last night after I had my cold shower experience.
I made coffee and worked on the blog posts so I did not get any farther behind. We were having some issues with the Wi-Fi hotspot in the camper and we sent an email to the CampEasy folks through their “chat” system on the tablet they provided us for the hotspot to try and figure out what might be wrong, or what we are doing wrong. We are supposed to have a system that is like a router inside the van, but we do not always see it as we should as a device in our connections for W-Fi. If it is not there to choose, we can’t find or use it.
It was mostly cloudy this morning when we got going and made our breakfast. This morning we had Icelandic Skyer yogurt with granola bars brought from home, and we split the last banana we had.
We headed over to the bathhouse to fill up our water bottles and brush our teeth. Then we put away our electric cord for the camper’s power and headed out. Overall, the Hellissandur Campground was good, it would have been much better without the issues, but that is camping.
We have a decent drive today, but there are several sights to see within the first hour of driving. The first stop was the Svodufoss Waterfall, which was only a few kilometers down the road. We turned off the main road and drove a bit to the parking lot. There were only a few cars parked when we arrived, so it was not yet crowded. There was a walkway to the falls, and it meandered through a field. The distance to walk to the falls was much longer than the straight line distance we could see from the parking lot to the falls.
The walkway had one bridge to cross the stream made by the waterfall, and we finlly arrived. There was one group that had hiked further up to the base of the falls, but luckily, they were heading down just after we arrived. They would have been in any of the pictures we wanted to take.
We decided this was another good tripod picture spot, so we set that up and took photos. We could see some other people heading to the falls from the parking lot, but I also had enough time to get out the drone and fly it some before they arrived. It was not prohibited to fly here, but a lot of people are not drone-friendly, and so we were trying not to impact anyone’s experience.
About the time I was finishing up with the drone, the couple we saw heading this way with two small children arrived. We packed everything up into our backpacks and headed back to the car. The walk was probably a little over a half mile each way but on a nice flat path.
The next stop was for the Kirkjufellsfoss, another waterfall. Stephanie wanted to try driving, so we switched up and she drove there. We had paid for an “extra” driver, just in case I could not drive for some reason, more as a precaution. We both wanted Stephanie to get some experience just in case she had to drive and it was not by choice.
On the way there, we went through a small town that had a waterfall off to the side, so we stopped there for a couple of pictures. More importantly, there was a bank with an ATM, and we stopped to get more cash since we did not have much left over after the first night’s camping fee. Most campgrounds take credit cards, but we wanted to make sure we had enough cash just in case, we are not positive all of the campgrounds we have chosen take credit cards.
I withdrew 20,000 krones this time like I should have done last time, which was about $150.00. There was still the 300 krone fee for the ATM, so it was better to get more, the fee did not change based on the amount. With that done, we continued onward to Kirkjufellsfoss.
Kirkjufellsfoss is supposed to be the most photographed waterfall in Iceland. We arrived to find a paid parking lot and lots of people, including some tour buses. The parking lot takes a photo of your license plate, and when you go to the automated machine, you put in your plate number and a picture of your plate comes up to select as the vehicle you are paying for. I think the cost for a “daily” pass was 1,000 Krones, probably way too much.
It was crowded here because off in the distance was a small town on the water, and in the harbor was a fairly large Holland America cruise ship, perfect timing to visit here today!!
It was quite crowded and we had to wait for some people to move from being close to the falls to get good photos. Of course, they were all wearing bright red or pink coats, and that is really bad for a photo, bright colors really show up.
In between tour bus loads, we were also able to set up the tripod and get good photos of the waterfall and the mountain behind it called Kirkjufell Mountain. There were a lot of people hiking up the mountain, but that was not in our plan at all for today.
We finished our photos and it was just in time as a fresh load of cruise ship passengers arrived. We were tired of the crowds, so we headed back to the camper and drove into the small town. There were literally hundreds of people walking out to the waterfall from the town, and we assume 99% of them were from the cruise ship. It looked to be a decent hike, probably 2-3 miles each way. We assumed the cruise line charged a good fee to take people there on an excursion, so many were opting to hike to the waterfall and not pay for the excursion.
From here, we continued onward to our next destination, which we planned to be the town of Stykkishólmur. There is a catholic church there run by the Franciscan Order, and surprisingly called St Frances of Assisi. There was also a Bonus Grocery store there and we needed some supplies. On the way there, we passed by a site that was not on our list called Berserkjahraun, which was a 4,000-year-old volcano and lava field.
We drove a few kilometers into the area and it was amazing. There were all kinds of lava formations, and so
me areas were just black pellets. We were glad we happened upon it. A little farther down the road, the lava field turned very rocky and was covered in yellow-green moss. there was a pullover area and we stopped for pictures and I also flew the drone around to capture it from the air.
We had driven past the turn-off for Stykkishólmur, so we headed back and turned off the main road. At first, we thought we were going the wrong way because the road turned from asphalt into gravel, and it was quite long about 32 Km. Eventually, we got back on an asphalt road and then were on another gravel road before finally taking a nice asphalt road into the town. We are still not sure we went the correct way, we sort of followed a sign for the Shark Museum, which we also knew was in the same town, but the route seemed odd with all of the gravel roads.
We finally made it to Stykkishólmur and headed to the Bonus grocery there. We bought more groceries for the next several days, and they easily fit into our two small rectangular ice boxes. They do a good job of keeping things cold. They run on 12 volts, but we feel better running everything on electric power at night instead of only the batteries in the camper. We do want to try to do a night or two without electric power, which should not be an issue, just so we know what to expect in case we don’t have an option for electricity. The only things we power besides the battery charger in the camper with electricity are my computer and Stephanie’s hair dryer. Most everything else is USB powered and there are plenty of USB ports in the camper.
We did make some lunch in a nearby parking lot before heading out. We also drove over to the Catholic church, and it was less than impressive, it just looked like an administrative building. There was another church in town that was really impressive and modern, but it was the more popular Anglican Church.
We headed out of the town in the direction of our next campground. For some reason, when Stephanie tried to put the location of our campsite into the GPS the navigation system said it was over four hours away, which did not seem possible. We headed in that direction anyway, there was one more waterfall we wanted to see called Drifandagil. We got there about an hour later and although it had been a little rainy, it was only cloudy when we arrived and parked. It was a little hike up to the base of the falls. First, I wanted to fly the drone, there was no one else here and it was a perfect opportunity to fly without offending anyone.
The waterfall was quite high, and at the maximum altitude it is legal to fly here, 320 meters, I was barely at the top. I brought the drone back as another couple arrived to visit the falls. We wanted to get closer to the base and before we could even get started on our walk there, the other couple was already there, it was like they flew up there. As we walked up the hill, the couple was already halfway up the mountain to the top of the falls, they were flying up and it was steep. Must be nice to be young, fit, and athletic. We did not stay to see if they made it all the way to the top, they had reached a really steep area and maybe that was all they could do, but nonetheless, it was impressive.
When we got back to the camper, we tried again to input the campground name into Google for directions, and this time it said we were only about 35 minutes away, which seemed much more reasonable. I knew we did not have a long drive today, and now we were glad we were much closer than we thought. Before we stopped, the directions said we still had three hours to drive, ouch. Sometimes here, because they use special characters a lot in their language, spelling places or things as we would does not get the correct result. They have something that looks a little like the letter “d” but it is not.
We found the campsite without difficulty, we could see it from the road. It was in between two large mountains, and fairly scenic. A young man met us as we drove in and we paid for the night, plus the cost of electricity. They have a heated pool and a hot tub, but those are extra, and we were too tired to use them plus it was getting a little rainy again.
We found a spot and pulled in. The whole row of campsites we were in had outdoor turf on the ground, which made it nice, especially with the rain we were now having.
We decided to shower after a bit, trying to beat the crowd since there were only two showers. We used just one shower room together, taking turns in the small shower stall, we did not want to occupy both of them at once.
After showers, we made our dinner in the camper, using the stove inside since it was still rainy outside. The camp had a nice kitchen area, the largest we have seen so far, but it was a bit of a walk away.
We cooked pasta with arabiatta sauce and had the rest of the French bread loaf we had the other day with our pasta. It was good and easier to cook in the camper than the first night in the camp’s kitchen.
We had a snack of some cookies we bought today, they are thin cookie wafers with a layer of dark chocolate on top and were really good because they were not too sweet.
It was getting late, it was already after 10:30 PM, and we were tired, so we made up the bed and called it a night.
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