The Golden Circle

 Friday was adventure day and our adventure took us around the Golden Circle.

I think if we had done the Golden Circle at the start of our trip vs the end, we would have oooo'ed and ahhhh'ed about the general drive more. But since we saw a lot of cool topography driving to and from Vik and through the Snuffleupagus, the drive itself was just a beautiful drive.

The sites we stopped at, though...

We stopped first at the Kerid Crater— a volcano that erupted all its magma and then deflated on itself.  We could walk up on the ridge or down along the water. We opted for along the water.

If there had been benches down here, we'd have stayed longer. Actually, that's not true because when there isn't wind or rain in Iceland, there's these devil creatures. Nowhere in any research on what to pack did we read that netting to cover your head would be good to bring.

These MF-ers were everywhere.

Our next stop was at a waterfall that was probably in my top three of the trip. Faxi (or Vatnsleysufoss)

It is grand and feeds into a river and there's a salmon ladder along the side. Sigh.

I was hoping this was gold in the water.

We took a back road to our next destination and had to cross this scary bridge.

We, along with hundreds of others, then stopped at Gullfoss.

But it was the gift shop that had us entertained.

These cleverly-marketed condoms
were $10

We were here.

Finding this foss required a 3km drive over gravel, potholes, little bridges, you name it. But the color was worth it.

And then the midges flew in our eyes and up our noses.

Having seen Old Faithful, seeing the geysir was not high on our list. We completely nixed it when all the parking lots were filled and we were tired of people.

Next was the National Park whose name uses letters not found in English. We planned to see the mid-Atlantic ridge but between lots of people and lots of midges, we drove around instead. We found this cool spot. 

There was a warning to stay on the path so that we wouldn't fall into any fissures. But there really wasn't a path. We did find some fissures, but were careful not to fall in.