Heading Home, Parting Thoughts

We finished the final two legs of our Golden Circle route last night.  The first leg from Gullfoss to the Selfoss area was in hard rain and wind, but not too cold, and wasn't bad.  The second leg into Reykjavik was dry but into a very cold and strong headwind.  It was about 90 km and by the time we got to town we were both frozen solid.

The camera/computer system has finally given up completely, so only a few photos of some friends we made along the way.

We're excited to be heading home to see family and friends.  It has been a wonderful and exciting and challenging trip, but the best part of any extended trip is coming home.  We are both leg-weary and thinking about the work challenges that lie ahead in the next few weeks.  Time to move on.

We hope that you've enjoyed this silly travelogue.  And we look forward to seeing and catching up with all of you.

Best,

Doug and Lorie

Iceland's Golden Circle

We have found that touring by bicycle is our favorite way to see a country.  Not only do you get to see the country up close – we go by slow enough that we can literally “smell the roses,” but it is the best way to meet people that we’ve experienced.  Locals always want to know about our ride, where we’ve been, where we’re going, how is it to ride a tandem (and “she’s not peddling!”).  And we almost always stop to chat with other cycle tourists, regardless of which direction they’re going (they are easy to spot – the bikes with panniers on the front and back and the content and smiling rider on the saddle).  It is almost etiquette among cycling tourists – take the time to talk.

But touring by bike can be alternately frustrating, cold, and exhausting, or all of them at once.  Yesterday was cold because of the rain and wind and was a bit frustrating because of traffic.  And our GPS routes are all but useless here -- the routes that we made before hand simply don't follow the roads that are actually being ridden.  So we rely on a paper map.  But we always try to keep in mind that a day can make a big difference.

Last night the rain kept up until about 2000.  That wasn’t a problem for us since we weren’t in our tent, but a nice hostel.  But at about 2200 the skies started to clear and things started to dry out.  Here’s a photo at about 2200.

The wind and rain have stopped for now

And here’s a photo at about midnight.  Not very dark, but it made us hopeful that tomorrow’s weather would be better.

Midnight in Laugarvatn.  It doesn't get any darker than this until a few weeks from now

And in the morning, it was nothing but beautiful.  There were broken clouds and no wind, and we were excited to get started down the road.  Actually, up the road.  

Morning isn't much different from evening

Today we go to Geysir, an area with lots of geysers and fumaroles.  We have a B&B booked in the little town of Geysir.  But we’re going to keep riding up to Gullfoss, which is a huge waterfall and a National Park.

We got a reasonable start on the day at about 0830 and it was chilly, but calm and dry.  And the traffic was very, very light.  At least at that hour.  We did anticipate a high volume of cars since Gullfoss is the No. 1 tourist site in Iceland.  But we had a fun ride and saw some interesting clouds (this one looks like a catcher’s mitt). 

I love this little catcher mitt cloud

The Geysir area is pretty agricultural and there are big hay fields and lots of sheep and horses.

The geyser fields at Geysir are pretty cool, though honestly they are nothing like Yellowstone.  We enjoyed walking around and watching a few geysers along with the throngs of other visitors.  Even though the day looked pretty nice in the morning, a steady rain was falling.  But it didn’t dampen our spirits much.  We went across the street and sat in a restaurant to wait things out.

A geyser at Geysir

We rode onward to Gullfoss through the rain, which tapered off soon enough.  Gullfoss is an amazing waterfall.  The photos tell the story best.

But the pictures don't give much perspective on the size or
volume of flow over the falls

A selfie at Gullfoss.  I think we look cold.  We were.

We learned that many years ago there was a proposal to dam the river to generate electricity, which would have eliminated the falls (ala Celilo in Oregon).  Wisely, Icelanders said no to the proposal.

In the distance we could see the Langjokull glacier and decided to ride further up the road to see if we could get some better photos.  There were absolutely no cars past Gullfoss – the road went another 12 km before it turns into a 4 wheel drive road, and it was desolate and beautiful place  

The lower slopes of the glacier

On the road to go as far as we could

No cars up here, but horses...

The glacier is massive

We could ride roads like this all day

Our picnic spot

On the way back to our B&B for the night.

 A strong, cold wind was blowing off the glacier but we decided to have lunch and enjoy the views.  It is a desolate and stunningly beautiful place and the glacier is amazing.  And this is a small one – the largest glacier in Iceland (Vantajokull) covers about 10% of the land mass alone (at least it does for now).  We both think that a good and really the only way to see parts is with a 4 wheel drive vehicle.  The road system is not very well developed, and there is so much to see.  Maybe another trip.

We made it back to our B&B in no time and found out that they have a hot spa on the hill behind the house.  How cool is that?  We quickly made our way up to it.  The water was hot (geothermally heated) and was just the thing for us.

Iceland seems to be working hard on ramping up their tourist economy, and it seems to be getting good results.  At least if you’re of the opinion that a tourist-based economy is always a good thing and/or sustainable.  (I’m not convinced that it is, at least absent more permanent work opportunities.)  But being a bit sarcastic, whaling can only go so far (yes, Iceland still has a whaling fleet and some restaurants have whale on the menu – we’ve walked out of two because of it), and the although Iceland has withdrawn its application to enter the EU (kind of a Brexit before Brexit?), the EU would never have allowed Iceland’s entry while they’re still whaling. 

Enough of that.  Today we head toward the Selfoss area.  We're not sure exactly what we'll see there, but it should be fun.

Tala við þig fljótlega.

Reykjavik to Laugvartn

As predicted, the weather looked a bit sketchy this morning as we got ready to ride the first leg of the Golden Circle route.  Our plan today was to ride to Laugarvatn, which is about 100 km from where we stayed in Reykjavik.  The forecast didn’t look too bad, but the rain was supposed to increase as the day wore on, so after about 5 cups of coffee we headed out the door.  It wasn’t raining at first, so we just wore warm clothes – the temperature at 0830 was about 13 degrees.  That’s not too bad but we were a bit concerned about weather later today.

We were glad that we’d pre-rode our route out of Reykjavik yesterday.  It helped a lot.  But still, we got lost several times, even when we backtracked on the GPS.  It is crazy how easy it is to get lost, even when you supposedly know where you’re going. 

But soon we were out of town and riding into the rural hills to the north and east of the coast.  

Just outside of Reykjavik

Icelandic horses that don't care about us!

There are some pretty unique colors -- I like the grey

It was calm in the morning

The theme of the day was uphill into a sometimes strong wind, with a fair amount of rain thrown in.  The hills are not steep, but they go on and on and on.  There are no trees on the hills, so it can get a bit monotonous.  And actually, the hills remind me a lot of the Columbia Gorge area between Hood River and The Dalles.  It was pretty going but since today is the third day of a 3-day national holiday in Iceland, traffic was pretty heavy.  The roads are narrow with no shoulder and it can be tight when there is oncoming traffic.  Most drivers are pretty courteous but still it was nerve racking at times today.  We’ll be on small roads most of the rest of the ride, and the holiday is over, so with folks back home we are hoping for some quieter roads ahead.

There are a lot of Icelandic horses and sheep.  The horses are small but are said to be pretty hardy.  The sheep pretty much have their run of things outside of villages – they wander all over the roads but we saw no road kill.

Our first stop was at Thingvellir National Park, which is situated at Thingvillir Lake, the largest lake in Iceland.  (“Thingvillir” is the Anglicized spelling of an Icelandic word that it unpronounceable to English speakers!  Here's the Icelandic spelling: Þingvellir)  The north end of the park has a rift where the North American and European tectonic plates are separating – the signs said that the rift grows 2 – 4 cm per year.  It is pretty cool to walk down the rift into the rift valley.  The place was packed and is a favorite hiking are for locals.  

The rift where the plates are separating

The walkway into the rift (notice how everyone is bundled up...)

A fissure (smelly sulfur gases all around!)

Snow in this fissure

Another view of the rift

Oddly (at least to us), Thingvillir is also the location of Iceland’s first parliament building.  I’m not sure why, since it is pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  Reykjavik seems a more likely place.  But here’s a factoid: Iceland’s parliament is the oldest democracy in the world -- parliament was formed in 980 AD.  Here’s a photo of the parliament building (no, it isn’t the original but it is of fairly recent vintage).

Parliament building

We had our standard lunch at the visitor’s center, bread and cheese.  Here the rain started in earnest.  We still had another 50 km to go, so it was going to be wet.  We suited up and hit the road.  Uphill again.  And into the wind.

The landscape is so barren in this central part of Iceland.  And it has the feel to it that in winter it must be very, very cold.  There are lots of barriers that they can close roads with that say “Stop, this road is snowed over and closed.”  There are unique volcanic fissures filled with warm water.

The water is super clear, and deep

Smelly, too, but you can't appreciate that!

And waterfalls.

A randome waterfall (a "foss" in Icelandic)

The rain finally did slow a bit, but the wind and the hills kept coming.  But at last, with about 5 km to go we crested a hill and had a glorious downhill run to Laugarvatn where we’ve booked a room in a hostel for the night.  We’re both cold and beat, so a hot shower and a snooze are in order.

Downhill to the lake, where we will spend the night

The landscape

Here’s our hostel (reminiscent of the parliament building in Thingvillir) – it used to be a school but is fixed up really nicely.

Home for tonight 

And here’s a pair of Icelandic horses; no, you’re not seeing double.  Well maybe you are but the photo has 2 horses in it and they never leave each other’s sides.  Good pasture buddies!

Good buddies

Until tomorrow.

Around Reykjavik

We got the bike put together and decided to take a ride around Reykjavik and then ride out to where we start our route around the Golden Circle.  Another beautiful day here – a bit chilly with a cool wind but the locals say this is the best weather ever.  Tomorrow it is supposed to rain.  Oh well.

We walked down to town kind of early and wandered a bit.  It is a very pretty town.  Here's some shots.

Pond in the middle of town.

Residential neighborhood.  Lots of public art.

The church.

The we found an open bakery.  It is open only 2 days a week and we got some bread and a few really yummy pastries.

Reykjavik's best bakery

The we got on the bike and rode west out to the lighthouse on the point of land that juts out from the west coast.  Tons of seabirds and the tide was out so the salt air, tidelands smell was wonderful.  Fresh air is a delight!

Lighthouse

Low tide

This area is pretty sheltered, but on the other side of the point is open ocean

Heading back to Reykjavik

The old harbour in town

Next we headed out to see if we could find the route out of town.  Reykjavik is a bit tricky to navigate so we wanted a head start on tomorrow’s journey.  We were glad we did, as we got lost a bunch of times.  After about 35 km we bumped into a guy riding a mountain bike and decided to ask him where we were.  He was a very talkative guy and he rode with us for about 10 km to show us where to go.

We had a nice talk about all things biking.  He’s serious into cycling, you could tell.  I mentioned that we’d ridden the Stelvio on the tandem and he thought it was a hoot.  He said that there’s only 2 other tandems in Iceland and neither are ever ridden.  Eventually we figured out why he knows a lot about cycling, he’s the National Champion MTB rider for 2016 from Iceland, Ingvar Omarrson.  He's also ridden professionally on the road.

Among other things, I asked if he is going to Rio for the Olympics.  He said “no,” since it is too hard for a small country to send many athletes to such things, and besides he said “it just isn’t that interesting.”  He lives in Holland so he can train throughout the year.  Nice guy to help us find our way.

Ingvar Omarsson in his National Champion's jersey

The direction we're heading

He showed us all the way to the one turn that we needed to make to connect to our route.  It would have been hard without his help.  Oh, we’d have made it eventually, but the helpfulness of random folks we meet never ceases to amaze.

We rode back to town, with some modifications in the route to make our pre-planned route easier.  We found kind of haphazardly a hot water water fall that the locals were enjoying.  There's a ton of geothermal pools on the island.

The water is very warm

And when we got back we rode to the “geothermal beach” that we’d read about.  The place was crowded but we wanted to feel the water.  It was cold, but there’s a couple of hot water vents in the shallow water that keep the water around the vents really toasty – you can see in this photo a round barrier just under the water – that’s where the vents are. 

The hot water is in the circle

We finished the day with a beer from a local brewery we’d spied when we rode to the lighthouse.  Good beer.  By far the best we’ve had on this trip.

Beer from bryggjan brugghús in Reykjavic

I am not sure if we’ll have any WiFi connection for the next three or four days.  If we do, I’ll try to update the blog.

Cheers!