Reykjavik

 Our last day and a half of the trip was in the capitol, Reykjavik. We walked the city quite a bit, checking out stores, graffiti, beers, pastries, food, and people. I'll just let the pictures do the talking

side of a building

alley way art

opera house

inside of opera house

you get lost staring at the ceiling and walls

Hot chocolate

Bernhoft Bakeri! best one, hands down

Not sure what these were, but they were incredible

big church!

inside of church - there were 5,275 organ pipes!

Vik to Reykjavik

We woke up in yet another awesome campspot and headed to Dyrholaey, which is a sea-bird reserve, and where there were supposed to be puffins around. The cliffs and rock formations in the area were some of the coolest we'd seen, again making Iceland seem even prettier. We walked around here, and sat on the cliffs watching the puffins and other birds fly in the wild winds and tall cliffs. Mel squealed just about every time a puffin would fly out from the cliff and out and around. We headed onward, to Skogafoss, another awesome waterfall.

Morning view

Wind shelters

View from one end of Dyrholaey

I think these two knew each other

Cliffs and caves at Dyrholaey, the three trolls in the distance on the right

There was a large 10 foot diameter hole right about where Dave is out there, that just dropped through that bridge 

Hi mom!

Tough to see in the pics, but there's a little puffin flying around down there

again

Hiyo!

Whoa!

good colors

That's Matt out there

 Then we continued on, checking out two other waterfalls and their areas - Skogafoss and Seljalandsfoss. Both awesome!

Skogafoss

Impressive

:)

from behind the Seljalandsfoss waterfall - we got pretty wet, but was really worth it

side view

Then we visited Geysir, the original geyser that we now call all other geysers after. It doesn't actually blow anymore though.... wah wah wah..., but others near it do! The main one there blows every 8-10 minutes, and up to 35 meters high!
This was part of the Golden Circle - the three closest and main attractions to Reykjavik, so after this, we headed to Pingvellir, the continental drift between North American plates and Eurasian plates. Pretty impressive history of this site also - was where parliament was established in 930 AD, and up to 1798. I'm not good with history, so wikipedia the rest...

a geyser

hot and sulfur-y

and ridiculously blue!

Here we go!

Pingvellir

Continental drift

Jokusarlon to Vik

The next morning, we awoke to more icebergs floating around, sunny skies, and warmer weather it seemed. After breakfast, we headed towards Skaftafell park, and started a hike there, which Dave knew to be a good one. It turned out to be an awesome hike, but we were hit with some rain off and on, and low clouds. We climbed from about sea level to 900 meters up, so it was another climbing day, which tired us out in a good way. The hike went past more awesome waterfalls, marshy areas, gigantic and daunting cliffs, the tongue of a glacier, and ultimately to the peak of that area. It was a looping hike too, which was awesome, and ended up being about a 6 hour hike, so we were glad we had lunch with us. This park was our first park with many other people hiking, but once we got past the initial mile or so, we barely saw anyone.

View from up on a small peak, looking at the lake and our tents (bottom left area)

Closer view to the tents

Buenos dias

Morning walk

Selfies

best morning teeth brushing you could ask for

The hike first passed Svartifoss waterfall and basalt columns

And then onward and upwards

We got pretty wet in some areas

We were in and out of the low clouds, which was pretty eerie at times

We eventually made it up to the peak of those two big guys, maybe higher? Can't remember

We ate lunch at this point, which had some scary dropping cliffs, and was only about halfway up as high was we went

The top! Above the clouds

Jaylah standing near another daunting cliff, which we couldn't even see the bottom of

On the way back down, we got to hike along the ridge overlooking a tongue of the glacier

After Skaftafell, we were pretty beat, and went ahead and took advantage of their campground cooking facilities. But then we continued on the road a bit to find a spot to camp for the night. We stopped off in Vik, and checked out the beach and some rocks called the "Three Trolls", and even saw some good waves. We didn't see anywhere to camp there, so we drove a little bit further and found a nice spot for the night.

Three Trolls