The alarms were set to go off at 4:45 AM on both phones, but I was already up just a few minutes before, so I turned mine off. There was some people moving about in the hallway, and the room was not that soundproof, so the noise woke me up.
Also, once I was up, the whole room smelled like cooking eggs/omelets with onions. The restaurant for breakfast must be above our room, we knew it was on the second floor, and we are on the first floor.
I hopped into the shower to freshen up and wash my sleep-rustled hair, plus it was nice to shower in the morning without having to walk in the cold to get there!!!
I woke Stephnie up about 15 minutes later and we both spent about 10 minutes finishing packing the suitcases. We knew one was good on weight, we just needed to add my toiletry bag back into it after showering and getting ready. That one weighed in at 49.1 lbs, but more importantly, 21.5 Kg. In European countries, Kilograms are the unit of measure, so the luggage maximum Kg is 23.0, which is about a half pound more than the normal limit of 50 lbs in the US. That gave us a little wiggle room.
We loaded up our sleeping clothes into the other suitcase, and a few other small items, and it weighed 48.5 lbs, so we knew we were finished with the suitcases and weight distribution.
We finished getting ready and it was difficult to do anything in our room this morning, there was hardly any light in the room. There are light fixtures, one on the ceiling with three bulbs, but it was really dim. There were two reading/night lights beside the bed, but all they did was make shadows, then there was another reading light by a chair, and it was also dim. I felt like we were packing in the dark. Luckily, once we were dressed, we could open the curtains and use the dime early morning daylight to see by, it was better than any of the lightbulbs. The bathroom light was the worst, it was really low, and a strip light that hardly did anything. There was also a make-up light hanging from the wall, but I could not even see my hair to comb it with that light. The best light we had was in the ceiling of the shower, it was the brightest light in the entire room.
We gathered up everything and left the room to head to the lobby 10 minutes before our scheduled shuttle time, as instructed by the lady at the reception desk yesterday. There was one other couple waiting in the lobby, and then a few more people showed up. A large bus arrived, and it was our shuttle to the airport. No one really made an announcement, so we asked the person in the lobby, and they confirmed it was the shuttle. I don’t think we were expecting a full-size bus, we had seen some small vans in the parking lot yesterday that said Knvin Shuttle on them, that was the name of our hotel.
In all, there were about 15 people on the bus, and that filled all of the seats, and two people stood. there was an extremely large handicapped area in the middle of the bus, plenty of space for 4-3 wheelchairs, and of course, there were no seats in that area. Most buses seem to have fold-down seats in the area to add seating flexibility.

We left on time, which was nice. We did not know how long of a drive it was to the airport. We guessed about 15 minutes. On the way, we could see the area where the volcanic rift is erupting and we could see several streams of hot orange lava erupting from the ground. It was pretty cool tp see. Stephanei took a few photos that showed it fairly well, but unfortunately, the windows of the bus were really dirty on the outside. We will have to see how they come out on a screen larger than the phone.
We arrived at the airport and were dropped off at the departure area. The airport here in Keflavik is not that large, so they don’t need separate departure areas for each airline, there is just one. We found the Delta Checkin area and got in line. They wanted to see our passports and give us a quiz before we could go to the counter to check in, we have seen this done before at a few other European airports, it is to further prove your identity, even though they have your passport and photo. Maybe it is to make sure you don’t have a fake passport with someone else’s info on it. The lady asked Stephanie questions first, one was to state her middle name, then one was to say the state you were born in, which is on the passport. then she asked me my middle name and how many days we had been in Iceland. I guess we passed, she let us into the line.
There was an area for Bag Check, and a couple in front of us asked how to use that if they were already checked in online, we were checked in online line also. Another lady directed us all to a kiosk area to get baggage tags. We followed the couple to the kiosks, and they used both of the two available, which they did not need to do. It took them a while and they were finally done.
I scanned the boarding pass on my phone to start the process, and both of our names came up for baggage tags, which is why the other coupe really did not need to use both machines, they could have done it together. I went through the screens, it already knew we had two bags for the online check-in, and then it printed out the luggage tags for both of us. Then came the tricky part, to properly put them on the bag. there were instructions on the back of the tag, and it took us a couple of minutes to figure them out, but we got both tags attached. The last time we did this on a trip, we accidentally pulled off all of the backing, so the entire long tag was sticky, but this time, we only pulled off the proper backing area and got them attached in a loop.
We headed to the baggage drop area and got in line behind the couple. There were two men at the baggage drop and they were having some type of issue, They had a large rifle case, and they were trying to check that in. Then we saw a small sign on a screen that said the baggage drop was closed. We were then actually waiting in a line to check in just like everyone else, but it was separate. We still had to wait for other people in the primary line to get our bags dropped off In the end, it was not any faster, and it still took about 5 minutes just to drop off the bags, the lady helping us printed out boarding passes we did not need, wh had them already on our phones. Our bags were weighed and both were under the 23 Kg limit, one was close at 22.5 Kg. We were finally done, and when I looked at the normal check-in line, there were only a few people in it, oh well, we tried.
From there, we had to go upstairs for security, and the choices were stairs or an elevator, we took the elevator, my camera bag is heavy, and that makes stairs difficult, especially at 6:30 AM.
We had to scan our boarding passes to get into the line, then we had to show our passports to a person who scanned them, and then let us pass into the security processing area.
We had to put everything in large bins except our shoes, and then we passed through a metal detector and waited on the other side to retrieve everything. We had no issues, nothing was flagged for additional screening.
From there, we headed through the large duty-free shop, everything was routed through the, and there was no other choice to get into the main terminal. We still had some Krones left, and so Stephanie used some of them to purchase a small sheep key chain to hang on her backpack with other similar keychains from our travels. Her backpack was starting to look like a menagerie of small stuffed animals. On a side note, this was the same duty-free store we mistakenly tried to purchase wine in on our arrival day in Iceland, but it required a boarding pass for purchases since this was the store for departing flights, not arrivals. That was how we knew where the small stuffed animals were, we had seen them when we were in this store before.
We headed into the main terminal to find somewhere to eat breakfast. This was part of our plan to use up our remaining Icelandic Krones. We had quite a wait for our flight, and they were not even posting a gate yet for our departure, it was too early.
We got into a long line for breakfast and one of the food vendors. They had different kinds of croissants and sandwiches, as well as made-to-order coffees made at a large espresso machine. Stephanie ordered a man and chees sandwich on sourdough bread and asked for it to be heated. I ordered a croissant with egg and bacon. I would have preferred ham, but that was not an option there was ham and cheese, but no ham and eggs option. Stephanie also ordered a diet Pepsi and a bottled water.
We did not see anyone using cash, everyone was using credit cards for their purchases, so we wondered if they even took cash. Stephanie asked when we ordered and the lady said yes, so that allowed us to use a majority of our remaining Krones, thank goodness, well not really, it was expensive airport prices.
I grabbed my coffee that was already made and was sitting off to the side where coffee orders were picked up. I then headed to find us an open table. Stephanie waited for the food to be heated.
I could see her coming over to the table and she was struggling with carrying all of the food. I thought everything would be placed in a bag because that was what we had seen for other orders ahead of us, but that was not the case. My egg and bacon croissant was in an open tray, the croissant was split and stuffed with scrambled eggs and had large bacon pieces on top. Not what I was expecting.
I helped her to get everything on the table and we sat to eat. Stephanei’s sandwich was good, but she said it was more of a veggie sandwich with a small amount of ha and cheese on it. There was lots of lettuce, some tomatoes, which she took off, and cucumber slices on it. Mine was pretty good but hard to eat. I had to slice it up with a knife, but the utensils were made from wood to be environmentally friendly, and the knife would barely cut the bottom of the croissant.
The scrambled eggs could have been warmer, but overall it was not bad, just not the type of egg and bacon sandwich I was expecting.
We headed out to the gate area, and there was not really a place to sit at the gate. there were four gate signs and only one small waiting area, for some reason. When we got to the gate, there was another passport and boarding pass check to be completed, and the lady put a small sticker on our passports and told us to wait off to the side until our Boarginr Zone was called. We did find a seat in the small waiting area near the gate. The boarding was listed to stay an hour before the flight departed, and that seemed odd since the plane was not that large, a Bpeing 757. After about 30 minutes that started the boarding. the actual gate was on the other side, and we could not see any aircraft parked on that side because of some walls
We were in Zone 6 and it took quite a while before they even got to Zone 5. We headed over to the gate and got into the last of the Zone 5 boarders, and by the time we got to the front of the line, they were calling Zone 6. We once again had to show our passports and they were scanned one more time. We did not have to show boarding passes, I guess they were loaded up with ur passport info. We headed up a ramp and that put us outside where everyone was being loaded onto large buses to be transported out to the plane. We were barely able to squeeze onto the bus that was being loaded. The bus doors were closed and we headed out to the plane. Since we got on last, we also got off first, so the Zone concept of boarding did not really work here. the bus was larger than normal there were three large double entry doors, and I am sure we were on the same bus as Zone 4 and 5 passengers, but now we were getting off ahead of them since we had gotten on last.
The bus drove a ways out onto the tarmac and stopped at our plane. We got off and we headed up some stairs to the jetway to board. The jetway was still full of passengers from the previous bus. I told Stephanie that maybe they were doing one last passport check at the doorway to the plane. They were not.
We found our seats and put our carry-on bags onto the overhead bins, which were empty above our seats. We had the aisle and middle seats on our row of 3 x 3 seating. Shortly afterward and large man and his wife stopped at our seats, and he was sitting at the window seat. He was really tall and a large person, not overweight, but was larger and it made for s tight fit, and sort of crowded Stephanie’s middle seat, she was not happy. The lady with him went back to her seat at the exit row bulkhead, We were not sure why they did not switch seats since he was so tall and obviously could have used the extra legroom at the bulkhead seat she had. Maybe they thought they could not switch assigned seats.
Our flight duration was just a little less than six hours to Detroit, so it was not a long flight as compared to some we have had, but long enough if the seating is crowded.
There was some issue with one of the restrooms near the middle of the plane, and some maintenance personnel were onboard trying to fix it, and that delayed our departure by about 30 minutes. I am not sure it got fixed, they put s sign on the door and we never went that far forward to see what it said, our bathrooms were closed behind us. Apparently, they have to put any type of maintenance done into the aircraft log book for documentation and our pilot said we would leave once all of the paperwork was signed off.
We were not concerned, we had a decent layover in Detroit but we also had to go through immigration and customs there once we arrived.
The flight was nice, there were a few times it was just slightly bumpy, but overall it was smooth. We both watched movies on our separate seatback entertainment screens. After about an hour, they served us some lunch. The choices were either a fruit, cheese, and cracker tray, or a ham and cheese croissant sandwich. Stephanie had the cheese and cracker tray and I had the sandwich. Luckily, I had not gotten a ham and cheese croissant for breakfast, it would be a repeat meal.
Both were actually pretty good. We both had a glass of red wine with our lunch or breakfast, which depended on which time you wanted it to be, morning in Iceland, or midday in Detroit. We chose midday, who drinks wine in the morning.
We had another glass of wine after lunch and then settled in for the remainder of the flight. I watched two different movies, one was The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which was entertaining, but just OK, and then I watched most of Dune. I had seen a previous version of Dune long ago, and this version was better, but it is a complex book, which I read several parts of, and it was hard to include all of the details and complexity into a movie. I could not finish the three-hour movie before we landed in Detriot, I still had about 30 minutes to watch, so I hoped it would also be available on the next flight from Detroit to Atlanta.
We arrived about 30 minutes late to Detroit, but we still had plenty of layover time here. We deplaned and headed to immigration. I do not think we could have parked farther away from the immigration area, it was a really long walk past all of the other arrival gates. Luckily, there were moving sidewalks at times, so it was better, but still a long walk.
We headed to the Global Entry line, this was going to be our first experience using it to enter the USA. Since we were near the rear of the plane, a lot of other people were already at immigration. There were quite a few people going to the Global Entry line. We first went to a screen that took a photo of us for facial recognition. Then we waited to go and see an immigration officer. He already knew who we were, he called us by name once we got to him, but we still had to get our passports scanned, and he asked us a few custom’s type questions, like what we had bought and brought back.
It only took a couple of minutes and we were done. The lie for normal immigration was not long at all, we were apparently the only plane arriving from outside the USA at this time of day. They also had a lot of officers to process people, so I am not sure we gained a lot of time with our Global Entry at this airport with their limited international flights. Unlike arriving at the Atlanta Airport, which is an internal flight nightmare.
Next, we headed to the baggage claim to get our luggage, which was already on the carousel. There was no other type of inspection, there was one officer in the hallway as we walked with our suitcases to the drop-off for connecting flights. I guess he was there to randomly pick people out for further inspections.
It was not really any advantage at all getting through Immigration quicker because we next got to the security area, and that was total chaos. They were only using two of the four carry-on baggage scanners and one of the full body scanners out of the two there. Then they had some issues with one of the baggage scanners, and that virtually shut down that side because it was going so slowly. At first, we did not see any advantage to having TSA Prescreen, but as we got closer to the ID and boarding pass check, they were handing ut blue cards to anyone with Precheck. At first, they only were announcing that the Precheck meant you did not have to take off your shoes for them to be scanned, wow, what an advantage.
When we finally got to the checkpoint, it had been over 20 minutes of waiting time. They gave us a blue card to carry and then we loaded all of to items into the bins for scanning. Then we headed to the line for full body scanning Then a lady came up and asked if anyone had TSA precheck, we gave her our cards and that enabled us to skip the body scanning machine. We still had to wait for our items to come out of the baggage scanner, but I think we gained a little time not having to do the body scan machine, but not much.
We put everything back together and headed to our gate. We had seen from the Delta App that this flight from Detroit to Atlanta was delayed by about 45 minutes, but we did not know why. Now it showed we had only about 25 minutes to make our connection in Atlanta, When we arrived at the gate we asked the attendant about the delay because there was a plane already at the gate. We were waiting for some pilots to arrive for this flight, and they were not scheduled to land from their current flight until 1:00 PM, and now this flight was scheduled to depart at 1:30 PM, 45 minutes later than scheduled. We asked about our connecting flight, and it was still listed as departing on time. We still had a chance to make it if we left here by the 1:30 PM scheduled time.
We were able to see our arriving and departing gates listed on the Delta App, and the app gave us an estimated time of 0 minutes to get from one gate to the other. We arrived at the A Terminal but near the middle access to the terminal train. We departed from the C Terminal but once again, near to the middle where the train connects underground.
We boarded on time and our pilots arrived on-time, but they still had to do all of the pre-takeoff checklist items and program the flight computer based on an announcement the pilot made.
Once again, we had the middle and aisle seats in t 3 x 3 seat configuration, and poor Stephanie could not get a break. When we got to our row, there was a rather large lady sitting in the window seat in our row, and she was taking up more than her allotted space, she was bigger than the seat. Stephanie was not happy at all. Luckily, this flight was only about an hour and 45 minutes long.
We backed away from the gate about 5 minutes late, but the flight time was less than originally scheduled, so we still had a chance to make our connection. We had asked two different flight attendants if they could help us get off the plane faster, but that were not really helpful. We have herd announcements before where flight attendants asked people to stay seated so passengers with tight connections could get off first, but I guess that is not done any longer.
We were served a snack and beverage we both had water. I was able to finish watching the Dune movie on this fight, which was nice. I could not find anything else to watch in the amount of time left on the flight, so I just started watching Top Gun Maverick again just to fill the time. I am not sure what movies Stephanie watched, we usually don’t have the same taste in movies on flights. I like action and scifi movies, she likes comedy, romance, and drama.
We were watching the clock as we started our descent into Atlanta, and trying to measure how much time we would have to make our connections. It was a little nerve-racking. We asked another flight attendant again about our tight connection, she said she thought we would have 30 minutes once we landed, but made it clear she was not making any guarantees we would make the flight, clear as in she made that statement about three times in a short one-minute discussion.
We knew it would be up to us, so our plan was for me to jump up as soon as the seatbelt sign went off and we parked, get our luggage down from the overhead bin and make it as far as we could before anyone else got up from their seat. We actually made it several towns, and then I asked a couple of people if we could get by to make a tight connection, and several were happy to oblige. We got to one person who would not let us by, not ask the person in front, so we were stuck for a few minutes waiting to get out the airplane door.
Once through, we walked as fast as we could to the center of the A concourse, and then down the escalator to the train boarding area. The next train was 42 seconds away, so our timing there was good. It only took a couple of minutes to get to Concourse, C and I told Stephanie if she could walk faster than me to go ahead to the gate, I and hold them up while I followed. We headed to the up escalators, and she got on one and I got on another, just because of the other people getting on that one were in the way. She rode about halfway up and then started climbing the escalator steps to save time. I rode farther, the steps were large, and my camera bag was heavy, so I could not climb that many. However, I did climb about the last 10 steps and then followed Stephanie to the Gate we needed. For a second, I lost her, I did not see her stop at the gate departure board to confirm the gate we needed.
She arrived a few seconds before me, they were almost done with boarding, and we asked if we still had seats on that flight because the Delta App had tried to put us on another later flight. He said yes, we were still on the flight so we used our boarding passes on the phone to get clearance to bard. The only issue was that the boarding pass now had no seat assignment on it. We knew our seats were somewhere around row 19, and they were on the two seat side of a 3 x 2 row configuration. All we had to do was look for the empty row, but there was not an empty row, Row 18 had a person in it as well as Row 19. I thought we were in row 19, so asked the person sitting there, and she confirmed she was in the aisle in row 19. Since the window was empty, I sat there. Then another lady who boarded after us said she was in row 19, window seat, so I got out. By that time, a flight attendant arrived and looked up our seats on their Delta-issued mobile device. Our seats were row 18, and the lady sitting there was in the wrong place for some reason, and she had to move. Now I needed to find a spot for my camera bag in the mostly full overhead bins. The last lady on helped me to rearrange a couple of bags before she sat in row 19. Stephanie just placed her backpack under the seat for the short flight.
We apologized to the person in row 19 who had to get up from her seat two times, one for me to get in and one for me to get out, and the other lady who boarded after us to get in.

We were glad we made it on the flight, we did not want to wait almost three hours for the next flight we could take home.
We kept checking the Delta App to see if our bags made it onto this flight, but the status never changed from them being loaded on the previous flight.
We took off on time and the flight was short. We arrived in our home airport on time and headed off the plane. The Depta App now indicated an update to our bag status, it said bags were expedited to our next flight. Maybe they actually made it with us.
We headed to baggage claim and the bags were not yes coming out onto the carousel. Then we heard an announcement with our names for us to come to the Delta Baggage Service Desks. just across the way from where we were standing. We headed inside the office and the man told us our bags were not on our flight, and would come on the next flight here. He verified our address and the bag descriptions and gave us a claim number. He told us the suitcases would be delivered to us tonight between 8-9 PM.
Well, at least we did not have to pull our luggage out to the parking lot with us.
We headed back upstairs to the departure floor since it was the same level as the long-term parking, and walked out to our car. The last worry was for the old Expedition to start, which was no issue after sitting for 18 days, so that was good.
We had not been able to use our QCR code from our prepaid parking email to get into the parking gate, so we knew we would have to go to a manned payment booth on the way out since we had to use a ticket to get in.
We handed the lady our ticket and my cell phone with all of the confirmation information on it. It was a little humorous because the ticket we gave her was completely blank. I had set it up on the dash so we would find it easily, and the sun had bleached out all of the writing, it must have been heat-sensitive print. She said it happens and to next time put it in top of the visor. She wrote some info on the ticket from my phone and then opened the gate.
We drove home but missed on turn on a side road that we do not normally use to get to the airport to avoid going through a slower section of the road. We ended up going the longer way home, or at least it seemed longer. It was funny because I was looking to see what the maximum speed we had driven in Iceland was, the highest speed limit there was 90 KPH, which is only 55 MPH after looking at my speedometer, which is in both measurements, it is an old analog dial. The 90 KPH seemed faster on the narrow and winding Icelandic roads.
We made it home and noticed the grass was pretty high, so we were not sure if it had ever been cut as scheduled while we were gone. It was sort of a side gig for the person mowing our next-door neighbor’s grass, so maybe he forgot. It seemed higher than it should be, but we would have to figure it out from our ring doorbell whether it was cut or not, it always sees me cutting the grass via motion detection. Grass cutting was on tomorrow’s list of things to do.
We headed inside and Sophie was glad to see us in a reserved way, she was meowing a lot and seeking attention from us, but it always takes her a while to settle into seeing us home. We normally unpack and start some laundry, but without suitcases, that was not happening.
We decided a bit later to get a pizza from Dominio’s, so Stephanie ordered it and went to pick it up so it was hot. We had pizza and some wine for dinner, relaxing and enjoying the view of the lake once again, but still trying to get used to all of the sunshine, and hotter temperatures.
We took much-needed showers and enjoyed the water pressure and relaxation of our own shower.
Stephanie did not last much longer before heading to bed. It was after 9:00 PM, and our luggage had not arrived yet. I finally got a text message that it was on the way, and s short time later, another text that it was here and being placed on the front porch. The driver left and I brought the two suitcases inside.
I had been having a hard time staying awake waiting on the luggage and watching the first real TV in 18 days. After the bags arrived, I also got into the comfort of our large king bed with adjustable sleep settings, much more comfortable than the thin camper mattress/seat cushion.
It was around 10:00 PM, and we had been up for about 20 hours and were beat from the stressful travel.
Over the next several days, we will be making a last post or two to provide some statistical information on the trip such as how far we drove in total, and some thoughts on the experience. pros and cons, etc.
We will also try and add a lot of photos and videos to the blog to enhance it, as well as add photo albums by each Day, just to keep it simple. And, of course, do some proofreading…..
As we always say on the last day, Bon Voyage!!
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More To Come
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