Lots of cliches and adjectives!!

It's hard to keep coming up with new ways to properly exclaim our joy every 3 seconds. We started out with lots of cliches and adjectives, but already by day 2 we've reduced it to, "This is just stupid." -- short for stupidly beautiful or amazing or fill-in-the-blank. Or, simply, "man."

A conversation might go like this:

"Man."
"Yup."
"Dude."
"I know."

The morning of day 2 brought about the first of "You know you're not in North America anymore when..." moments, of which we're assembling many.

First, the bathrooms here are ridiculous. Even the supposed "port-a-potty" type facilities are clean, well stocked with supplies, and all have running water! And, most importantly -- THEY DON'T SMELL! Amazeballs!

Anyway, woke up on day two, looked out the window and discovered I had in fact slept under a waterfall and it wasn't just a dream. Got up, made coffee and walked around and under the fall -- getting soaked and loving every single drop.

 Here's your dose of "you know you're not in N. America when..." this is your exit path -- no stairs, no signs saying caution, no hand rails. Bam! Just you and nature.

We drove just a little ways down the road to a camp ground with walk in access to another foss. This was awesome -- we could walk into a cave like area under it. I shot some video of this because the sound was so amazing!

After this, we walked back outside and the grass looked so amazing, soft, and green -- I had to lay down in it.

We cruised onward to an area where we'd read about a geo thermal pool. An interesting thing about Iceland is that the directions are both as specific as possible and completely vague. We read that you park by the house and walk 10 minutes. So, we parked by a little house we found and started walking. It failed to mention we'd be walking along a rocky river bed, which was totally fine, but I would have carried my things in a backpack had I known! This was good foreshadowing though... Before long, we came to this amazing and completely deserted pool. It was a bit nerve wracking to just jump in not really knowing if it was ok, what was in there, how deep it was, etc. But, I was desperate for anything even remotely related to bathing -- so I jumped in. Ahhhhh.....amazing. Perfectly warm and soothing. There was even a deep end and a shallow end:)

 Dave on the hike back to the van after the geothermal bath soak and swim.

Lunchtime! We drove into Scogar and found a funny little cafe/dinner theater looking place and I chowed down on fish and chips. The salad was super good -- the feta was made with fresh sheep's milk and the veggies are grown right here in Iceland. Their main product is geothermal heat -- so they have lots of green houses and can grow veggies year round. Dave had a smoked lamb sandwich.

 This cute little farmstead sits in Scogar at the mouth of the river at the bottom of the waterfall.

 Lots of tourists because we were there during the middle of the day. Another "You know you're not in N. America..." moment -- well, ok, several. A) There were 456 steps up to the top and no other way up. Not always handrails. No markings or warnings. B) Almost all the tourists went up to the top -- even the elderly ones! C) There was no bathroom or concession stand sort of place other than the hotel and cafe where we had lunch.

 You can't tell from this pic, but he was hanging out on this little chunk of overhang taking a picture of the foss.

 One happy girl!

 This is what is going on just upstream of the major falls. One thing we're finding is that all Icelandic waterfalls are compound. If you keep walking, you'll find more waterfalls.

 A little bit of magic as we walked back to the RV after a great and steep climb up and back down. Loved it.

Next, we ventured over to a gorgeous black sand beach. I was amazed at the sand itself -- check out the texture...

 really cool basalt columns -- the tops of these were wide enough to sit on. When we first arrived, there was a large group there sitting all over the columns for a group photo -- looked cool having people stacked all over them!

We continued our journey on east and made a brief stop in a super cute little town called Vik. It had an adorable church at the top of a hill overlooking the town.

 Love these pretty flowers that look so much like blue bonnets. They are lupines.

We concluded our evening with an amazing, long hike in a deserted canyon. It remains one of our favorite places (I'm writing this now on day 7). The temperature, colors, landscape...everything was perfect. We walked until around 11:30 PM and intended to stay right there at the base of the canyon. There was a WC and everything! (bathroom = WC= water closet) Unfortunately, when I came out of the WC, I saw a small sign that said no camping:( It was odd, because generally you can camp absolutely anywhere unless you are on private property. We thought about ignoring it because we were so remote and it was already almost midnight -- we didn't figure anyone would really be coming to check. But, ultimately, we moved on, sadly, and ended up camping under another waterfall just a bit down the road.

Dinner before the canyon walk -- sat down by a pretty creek under twin waterfalls.

 Twilight. We're in 24 hours of sunlight, so this is about as dark as it gets. Gorgeous. So glad we brought sleep masks to block out the light. Dave has been referring to them as, "velvet love masks."

 Find it totally interesting that many trails here go right through farms and people's property -- and they'll just build ladders like this one so you can get over the fences.

This is the view of the waterfall from my bed in the van. Was around 1 am at this time. Man, we were exhausted but what a stellar day!