Today I had 9.3 miles ahead of me, estimated to take approximately 6-7 hours. The night before, in the restaurant, I’d met a couple that was doing the trail in the opposite direction and said there were lots of really flat sections ahead, although more up and down and some big river crossings (they said thigh-deep for one!).

I woke up to rain of course. This is always a dilemma. Do you try to wait out the rain to take down your tent? Or, it could be raining for a long time. You can only delay for so long. I could afford to wait a bit longer. I was especially pleased with my speed the previous day, and actually thinking I might get to the next camp too early and be bored! I made my breakfast and waited a bit.

Well, what will always happen is that as soon as you take down your tent while it is raining, it will stop raining RIGHT WHEN YOU ARE DONE. Of course. But I was actually quite pleased with my skills taking down my tent in the rain. I was proud of myself for successfully camping solo for my first night. So I was in a surprisingly good mood given the situation.

I set off around 8:30 am, and starting by getting to traverse some of the beautiful green scenery I had been overlooking the previous day. The photo below shows the trail with people trekking.

There was my first around knee-deep river to cross. I changed my shoes at the river.

You can see the hikers below preparing to cross. On this crossing, my feet got so cold that they stung in pain. However, I was successful by having proper equipment (Keens and trekking poles), and crossing in a wide part of the river where the current is less strong. I saw some of the British chaperones throughout this part of the hike and chatted with them as I went along.

The scenery would continue to change from these gorgeous electric green on black mountainscapes, with a few more steep up and downs….

To the flat, black martian landscape. Where you walk through volcanic sand. It’s kind of odd. And get to view this gorgeous, glowing glacier. I kept trying to take pictures of it, not realizing it would be a featured player throughout the rest of the trek.

I loved seeing flowers in this strange landscape. I love wildflowers and have been hunting them this summer in Colorado, so it was amazing to see what grew here among the black sand.

There was a rushing river with (thankfully) a bridge from which I took the photo below.

 

I loved seeing the progress I made in these Laugavegur trail signs. Although they are in kilometers, so I’d try to make the conversions in my head to miles and somewhat fail and just say to myself, that doesn’t seem too far!

This black sand section stretched on seemingly endlessly. You would see tiny dots of backpackers way ahead of you on these long, black, sandy stretches. Every so often I’d catch pace with one of the British chaperones or someone else I’d met along the trail and chat for a bit, or ask strangers to take photos of me.

As you can tell from these photos, the weather cleared up nicely and you can even see some blue sky and sun. For Iceland, this weather was just amazing.

The photo below is looking behind me on the trail and gives you an idea of some of the vistas I saw, and how long the trail stretched out in each view.

 

Look guys I even UNZIPPED my rain jacket. Not exactly balmy, but pretty nice by Icelandic standards!

I caught my breath with one of the British chaperones and we looked upon a black, endless vista. Where was this camp? That’s when the young British women on break from university came around the bend. They were walking the trail to note markers that needed repair. What a remarkable way to spend a summer! They assured us that our camp was just around the bend, as we came into the breathtaking view below.

Wow, what an incredible place for a camp. We would be camping under the glacier (which trust me, looks much closer in person and glows magically). It was around 2:40 pm. Once again, I had done the hike in less time than I had expected (around 6 hours for an estimated 6-7 hour day).

 

I asked about hut spaces. There were spaces, but I would be the only one with a group that was together if I chose that. I asked about weather for camping, and the warden said it looked good. It was gorgeous out at this point, so camping sounded great.

I walked down to the campsite. I thought the previous couldn’t be beat for beauty, but this was lovely with a creek running nearby and a glacier right above you. I was the first to pitch in this lower area of the camp, although many would join me later. Someone had already built the site with the rock walls below, so I used those to guy out my tent.

 

The British girls had mentioned that there was a hike from camp that was well worth doing to a canyon. Markarfljótsgljúfur canyon – yes, I googled and copy and pasted that. I was hanging around camp wanting to do the hike – the weather was good and it was not dinner time yet, even for an early dinner. I happened to meet some hut people – most of the group was a family trip of people from Utah. They were all hut partners. We set off on the hike.

This canyon is remarkably stunning. It has incredible shades of green and red.

 

The folks I was hanging out with were very nice, and we talked about our experiences so far and life in Utah and Colorado. We discussed how so few people in the world had seen this canyon. It was this surrealist canyon, with no information markers or railings, in an uninhabited place in Iceland.

 

The two younger guys in the group were great at posing Instagram photos, so took this for me (it’s definitely a different look to those cute travel photos of girls in European cities wearing sundresses, but 2 hats and rain pants was practical, dammit!):

 

We ended up doing the whole trail, which took maybe an hour or more?

We continued to get stunning glacier views:

I started to cook dinner outside of the hut, and some of the hut people came to sit with me. How can you beat this view?

I made two of my dehydrated meals – I had an extra due to my changed plans. It started to get too cold, so I retreated to the campers’ tent which had picnic tables for cooking to make my hot chocolate. The high school group was there from England, making it a lively scenery. I mean, it was quite impressive that they were cooking their own meals (although some of them mentioned they had forgotten their shoes for the rivers – how do you do those crossing without shoes?). I had brought my toiletries up with me – it was a bit of a trek down to my campsite for the night after brushing my teeth.

Also, maybe this is kind of gross, but I didn’t shower. There were pay showers available (around $4 USD), but there was always a line. It was also really cold, and I would definitely not want wet hair to camp. The showers were inside, but you’d step right out to the cold. I used makeup wipes as kind of a “shower” but didn’t really feel like doing much more, when I knew I could have a shower the next day.

I set up my sleeping pad, pillow, and sleeping bag, went to sleep before it got totally dark. I actually got too hot in the night. I have a 15 degree F bag, and it got to around 40 F that night according to the thermometer on my pack. I also had chemical hand warmers and all my layers on. Once again, I was so utterly exhausted that I fell asleep quickly (which I don’t typically) slept like a log throughout the night.

Both nights camping I fell asleep to the sounds of people speaking all kinds of different languages and with different accents. It was amazing. I don’t know when I’ll ever experience anything like it again.