Two more days in Jökulsárgljúfur canyon and a day to move on to Eastern Iceland.

We spent Thursday and Friday exploring around this area.   Jokulsargljufur canyon is part of the Vatnajokull National Park and is a huge canyon that follows a river from dettifoss to Ásbyrgi.   Along the way there are many beautiful waterfalls and rock formations to enjoy.   There is one trail that goes all the way from Ásbyrgi to Dettifoss, and takes at least two days.   We won’t do the whole thing, but instead do parts of it from the various parking lots at each end and along the way.

There’s a campsite at Ásbyrgi where we have been staying, with a playground right next to the bathroom.   Sage says “me, that!” to make sure we know she’d like to play.

On Thursday, we drove to Dettifoss again, had lunch there and hiked further south from the waterfall.

We came back to the car for a work call for Steve and then afterwards Steve and Sage walked south from Dettifoss again to Hafragilsfoss, while I stayed and read my book.

The whole area is just gorgeous.   Steve felt like he wants to explore more. It’s a beautiful area and I’m happy to see more too. So we decided to stay another day and do a longer hike.

With that plan, we drove back to Ásbyrgi campsite, stopping at Veggur restaurant again, because it was only one of two restaurants open, and was good (we tried the other one in 2018 and remember being unimpressed).

We enjoyed nice phone calls from Abu and Nicola and family.    It was a long but fun day.   We pulled back into the campsite at 10pm and Sage went right to sleep.

On Friday, after showing Minnie the playground we made a quick stop at a short overlook of the canyon.   Sage ran and stopped for rocks.   I showed her how to skip, which she loved. 

From there we drove to the parking lot right in the middle of the canyon.   We hiked south.  It was a nice hike and it had many options for various loops.   At the end of the first loop we decided to go on, which was a great idea.

The weather was beautiful and warm and we saw noone on the entire hike except at the very end.  The trail went along the river, eventually going down and across another small river.   This one did not have a dry way to cross, so we prepared to wade across. Steve made two long sticks for us and we took off our shoes and socks.  Steve rolled up his pants, but my jeans were tight, so I just took off my pants and waded across.  It was cold but we made it and our feet warmed up quickly on the other side.

The path followed the stream a while until eventually meeting another stream and a bunch of really cool waterfalls.

This is where we saw one other family walking on a path from the next parking lot south.

We had decided this loop was as far as we wanted to go, so we looped back towards our car.

The path back was definitely overgrown at first, but eventually it opened up and meandered along the land, rocks and small streams.

Back at the car, my phone says the entire loop was 9.5 miles. We agreed it was one of the highlight hikes of the whole trip.

Exhausted and happy we drove on from Jokulsargljufur canyon to a campsite about 40 minutes away.

We fed Sage and I put her to bed while Steve made dinner for us.  It was delicious, rice noodles in a spicy Asian sauce with vegetables.  He is in charge of food this trip (I call him the CFO) and he is doing a great job. 

Today we planned on a long drive to our first stop in eastern Iceland, Borgarfjörður Eystri.   From our campsite it was over 4 hours driving.

Along the way we stopped for groceries, water, gas, lunch in the van (delicious cheese, bread and veggies overlooking the water) and a few lookouts.

The first was a 2.5 mile hike along Raudanes Point.   It was really beautiful and the weather was great too.   Sage was excited to immediately recognized the puffins.   The walk went along the basalt cliffs and many holes, caves and natural bridges.

The rest of the stops were shorter, for quick looks at waterfalls, cliffs and mountains and lots of pictures.   It’s very clear today and you can see very far.

Tonight we are camping in Borgarfjörður Eystri, which claims to be a hikers paradise.    There are lots of hikes to choose from.   We are planning to get into town and figure out our plans.

We fed Sage and I put her to bed while Steve made another delicious dinner, while we made plans for tomorrow.