Built To Roam: Road Trippin' Iceland: Part 1

Simply put, Road trips are awesome. Ever since the invention of the car, and more recently the Interstate System, road trips have become romanticized. Hell, there is an entire genre of American Cinema devoted to the road trip. So it's no wonder that more and more people take to road tripping each year. With the increasing popularity of Yelp and Trip Advisor, along with shows like Diners, Drive-In's and Dives and Man vs. Food, road trip planning has become easier and easier.

Troll face.

I distinctly remember as a kid taking road trips with my family, we would stop and stay at random hotels and eat in restaurants that were close to the highway. This approach is all but dead for our generation. Why would you ever leave these huge decisions to chance when you could choose the hotel/restaurant with the best reviews? But, I digress. The point, I suppose, is that road trips are one of the best ways to experience and see a region. Sure flying is a great way to get to your destination, but the key is to rent a car while you're there, that way you can be on your own schedule and suck in everything that the region has to offer. So when I got the chance to go to Iceland, that's exactly what I did.

Church guy.

Now I'm not saying that the public transportation in Iceland is horrible, or that the country can easily be seen without renting your own car, but the truth is, it is, and you can't. Renting a car is absolutely essential in order to get the full Icelandic experience. Not only can towns and attractions be hundreds of miles apart, but most destinations are off the beaten path and can only be visited with your own transportation (preferably 4x4 if you have a billion dollars to spend on one).

Bow.

So if you do decide to go to Iceland, do yourself a favor and rent a car. I know it's scary to drive in another country, especially if you don't have any experience, but luckily Iceland isn't that hard, they drive on the same side of the road as us and the majority of the country's population is sheep, so besides for the occasional livestock parade, there isn't much in the way of traffic and even less in the way of bad drivers.

Cliffs.

In our ten short days in Iceland we drove over 1400 miles, covering a large section of the Ring Road from Höfn to Grundarfjörður (Pronounced: Grundle-fart-horder, I'm pretty sure.). We saw upwards of one billion waterfalls, multiple viking caves, countless sheep and horses, massive, stunning, ever-changing, god-like, Game of Thrones-esque, 10 out of 10, Sam Neil glasses removing, Arch of the covenant opening, This guy's reaction, amazing vistas. The country is gorgeous, and every five minutes we were treated to something new the likes of which I had never seen before,.I continued to be impressed everyday.

That's a lot.

So for this post I just wanted to show some of the pictures from a few of the sights and short hikes on our drive from Reykjavik to Skogafoss, including Seljalandsfoss, Skogafoss, Dyrhólaey, and Reynisdrangar. Once again thanks for reading. Cheers!

Mileage: 2.5 Miles