Iceland! July 6-20, 2018

     Earlier this year while in the middle of the winter/spring semester of college, I was living with one of my married brothers. Working almost full time while attending flight school full time had me stressed out and I did not have the time I wanted to make it out at least every other weekend or so. I was in the middle of a study session and just couldn't do it anymore. I wandered out to the living room where my brother and sister in law were relaxing after getting home from work. I expressed my stress and started talking about some trip ideas. The idea of going out of the country came up and excited me. I was 20 years old and had never been out of the country. We immediately pulled up Google and started searching for cheap flights. My sister in law had flown on WowAir before and we found round trip tickets to Iceland out of LAX for about $450! That sealed the deal and right then and there we bought the tickets for a 2 week trip in July. That motivated me for the rest of the semester.

     Fast forward to July 6th, 2018. We flew out of the Provo, Utah airport in the morning, arrived in LAX and had a 5 hour layover. Boarded the plane at 7pm and off we flew to Iceland. We arrived in Keflavik around 10am local time. Grabbed our rental car and began our journey. We had planned the trip itinerary months in advance and the nutshell plan was to drive around the whole island seeing various sights. I literally took thousands of pictures on my Canon Rebel. There were too many to choose from! I've picked my ten favorite pictures from the trip.

Snaedalsfoss Waterfall and my best friend

Snaedalsfoss - how beautiful!

Reynisfjara

Seljavallalaug hot spring

Dyrfjoll

Hengifoss behind me. I'm tired.

Solheimasandur Plane Wreck

Overlooking the North Atlantic. Cold front moving in.

Svartifoss

Sveinsstekksfoss

Driving around Iceland for two weeks was amazing. I loved ever minute and would do it over again. Costco was a really nice place to stock up on some things before we took off around the island. Everything on the island was so expensive.

If I were to make a "top ten" list, these would be on it:

- Seljavallalaug hot spring

-Reynisfjara

-Svartifoss & Skaftafell

-Snaedalsfoss

-Dyrfjoll

-Laugarfell hot spring

-Detifoss

-Reykjahlid

-Guðrúnarlaug hot spring

-Hellalaug hot spring

Bonus items!

-The northern town of Husavik is awesome!

-64°20'31.8"N, 14°56'51.8"W coordinates to an awesome grotto with a waterfall!

Bonus picture: waterfall on the way up to the grotto

Iceland was beautiful. Literally, every single part of it. I would definitely go back, but in ten years or so. If I did go back, I would rent a high clearance vehicle and do a tour of the interior of the island. Iceland is expensive. Luckily, we had cheap airfare and were able to split things evenly between the four of us. By the time bank accounts settled after the trip, My total trip cost came out to about $1,200 (including airfare). I was expecting costs to be higher, so I was pleasantly surprised.