This day was a day of beautiful scenery and awesome waterfalls (which I can pretty much say about everyday of our trip)! :)
Before we left the Lake Mývatn area, we made a brief stop at the Dimmuborgir Lava Fields. It was pretty cool!
This place was rather large and we could have spent hours here, but we spent about 30 minutes or so and I was okay with that. :)
As we entered the lava fields, they had a sign about the Yule Lads. You should read the sign in the picture above to learn more about them. Also you should look up Grýla. (She's an Icelandic mythical character who parents will use to scare their children to behave well. Kind of like the boogeyman in American culture.)
I think we found one of the Yule Lad caves. :)
Look I'm in their cave! ;)
Lake Mývatn from the parking lot of the lava field!
It is so pretty! Now it's time to head to our next stop. Goodbye Lake Mývatn!
Goðafoss! Goðafoss literally means Waterfall of the gods. There's a historical story that in about 1000 AD some leader in Iceland had to decide whether Icelanders should adopt Christianity or not. He decided they should accept it. To show that this was his decision, he went home and brought all of his statues of pagan gods to the falls and threw them in this waterfall. And that's how the waterfall got its name.
You could walk right up to the falls. It was cool to me that on this part of the falls, the water was so calm before rushing down the falls.
And there's a rainbow! I loved it when it was sunny and there were rainbows at the waterfalls.
Goodbye Goðafoss! Now onto our next stop.
Aldeyjarfoss! Ok, I really loved this waterfall! Maybe part of it was the adventure of getting there and that we only saw two other people the whole time we were there, but I really loved it!
This waterfall was 42 km (one way) off the main road traveling on a gravel road in a river valley. It was seriously so beautiful and off the beaten path.
Once we were pretty close to the falls (within a few kilometers) the road started to get worse and we started going up. Thankfully we had 4 wheel drive (we purposely rented a 4 wheel drive car for just such times) otherwise I'm not sure we would have made it up that last part.
The parking lot for the falls was up and then we had to hike down to get a better view of the falls. It wasn't too far, though.
And boy was it worth it!
Since it took us awhile to get here and since the falls were so cool, we stuck around here for awhile to enjoy the scenery! I also sat here and wrote in my journal.
I loved the way the water bubbled at the bottom. It wasn't hot, but I think just how fast it was moving made the water seem to bubble.
This is my whoatthatssocool face! :)
Look at the cool rock formations to the left of the waterfall!
Isn't that cool?!
Looking down the river from Aldeyjarfoss!
It's time to say goodbye to Aldeyjarfoss!
Some of the scenery on the way back to the main road from Aldeyjarfoss! It was so pretty and people live out there and see this awesome landscape everyday.
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. We stopped in Akureyri for some ice cream. Yay!
It was creamy and delicious!
We went to a Christmas store just outside of Akureyri! I was pretty excited about this. :) It was a cute little store, where I may or may not have bought a nativity scene.
This is the outhouse bathroom at the Christmas store. It was a modern toilet inside and was decorated with red and green tiles, green walls and Christmasy towels etc. It was pretty awesome!
We took a scenic route to our hotel that night. It was one of the most beautiful drives I've ever been on! We went up one of the northern arms of Iceland (the one with Siglufjörður at the top.)
Driving along a fjord!
Isn't it beautiful?! I loved it!
Siglufjörður! I loved the colorful buildings!
Siglufjörður!
Siglufjörður!
At this spot we were about 40 km from the Arctic Circle and for some reason I now have a great desire to go above the Arctic Circle someday. I've added it to my bucket list.
I seriously loved the fog just along the water. It made for some amazing photos!
Diana took this picture! Isn't it awesome?!
This is me 40 km from the Arctic Circle. :)
So on this scenic route, there were quite a few tunnels we had to go through. There were a couple of them that were one lane tunnels for two way traffic. It was a bit scary at the beginning when we weren't sure how it worked. But we soon realized that there were turnouts every once in awhile and when a car was coming towards us, we should try to get to one of the turnouts ASAP.
Our hotel room for the night. I thought it was so charming and bright. I loved it!
Overall, this was a lovely day of awesomeness!
