The adventure began with Crosby driving up to the house with his partner, Toby. We settled in for the day, introducing Toby to the beach with a walk between rain showers, some game playing, then getting serious with finishing our packing. We took it easy with a pizza dinner, but capped it off with Kevin’s first solo-made pie…strawberry rhubarb, with rhubab from my garden.

The next morning we woke with sufficient time for us to start the day with a pancake breakfast. Soon it was time to send Toby off with us packing the car to head to the airport. We took the ferry over, which was pleasant as usual, but that’s when the pleasantness ended for awhile. The freeway traffic soon backed up dreadfully, as there was a tractor trailer accident. With patience and some old east coast driving tricks, we made our way to meet my cousin, Babs. She was kind enough to agree to let me park my car at her place, with her driving us to the airport. We made a stop along the way to have lunch at a favorite vegan restaurant. We easily checked in and awaited our first flight, heading to Reykjavik.

The flight took off late, but other than being cramped and uncomfortable and unable to sleep, the 7+ hour flight was uneventful. Mandy and Kevin tested out their new eye shades, which were rather amusing. We zipped through immigration, then awaited our bags. I got a tad nervous when everyone’s came off but mine….then we realized that my identifying strap had been lost. Fortunately, there the bag was without the strap still rotating in lonely fashion. The next step was finding an ATM and some Icelandic Sim cards for our phones. We found a cab to take us into the city to pick up our Kuku van, our home away from home for the next 8 days. We got all the paperwork completed, got the brief on its operation and we drove off to a nearby grocery store. Quite the undertaking with 4 very tired individuals looking for easy food to prepare in the van, while not being able to read any labels. Thank goodness for pictures and the somewhat similarity between Danish and Icelandic, allowing me to understand a bit.

Finally it was time for our first day of sightseeing. Though it was drizzling rain we were excited to be here and be on our way. Kevin took the helm of Kuku, with Mandy navigating. We headed north out of Reykjavik, up the beginning of the ring road, which follows the circumference of the country. We plan on driving clockwise on the entire thing, with some diversions. One of which we took today, heading to the Snaefellsnes Peninsula. Mandy keeps a bullet journal so we decided to track some things along the way, including waterfalls, sheep herds, one lane bridges and roundabouts. Made for fun in scanning the countryside. We began seeing what will most likely be many waterfalls. I love the exuberance the kids exhibit in all things. Kevin would pull over when seeing something interesting, we’d pile out and run off to get a close up view. In determining our route we opted not to take the short way via a tunnel and instead drove around the Hvalfjordur fjord. Beautiful vistas even in the light rain. My favorite spot was a waterful located so close that we could walk right up to it, through a field of lupins.

We drove on until reached the Tradir campground, which was listed as one of the facilities in our “camping card” that we purchased ahead of time. We got signed in, found a spot where we backed the van right up to the edge of the cliff along Haffjordur. We got all our gear and supplies sorted out to make the van comfortable and cozy. Mandy got the burner going and made up a quick pot of ramen for dinner. While I’m writing, they’re playing rummy. Next is planning tomorrrow’s drive and hopefully a good night’s sleep.