That first morning in Selfoss, I could immediately tell it was going to be a lovely day. The Sells got up shortly after I did and went out to breakfast and then to a yogurt museum, while I did my usual procedure of eating a granola bar and drinking tea while working on my laptop in the campground dining area.

Then we bipped off to see a volcanic crater. But before we left the campground for good, I ran to the outdoor sink area with a plastic bin, some laundry detergent sheets, and a few stinky clothing items. No way was I spending $14 on one load of laundry. The sun was beating hotly through the camper van windows, so I put my black pants on the dashboard as we drove, hoping they’d dry quickly.

I was wearing my backup outfit of leggings and a knee-length black skirt, but when we reached Kerið crater, I got out of the camper and realized my fleece-lined leggings were far too warm for the balmy day. At the same time, wearing the skirt without the leggings would be chilly. So I decided to wear my damp pants.

The cool thing about the crater was that you could hike all the way around it. The paths, the parking lot, everything was covered in the same type of red lava rock you can buy in bags at a garden supply center.

This pic cracks me up because there’s almost no sense of scale…it looks like I’m standing beside a puddle haha.

Although I confess this crater lake did look like a puddle when compared to Oregon’s Crater Lake.

Anyway, the day proved so nice that after a while I didn’t even wear a jacket, and when my pants fully dried I missed the pleasant coolness of the damp.

After the craters, it was on to the Strokkur geyser.

This was the first time I noticed that if you’re in an area with geothermal activity, there’s never just, like, one hot spring. The heat bubbles up from multiple points.

So as we walked toward the geyser, we passed a few hot springs, such as this pit of boiling red mud.

In my memory, the only other geyser I’d ever seen was Old Faithful, back when I was a teenager. Two things I recall from Old Faithful was that you had to stand pretty far back, and it gave you some warning before it blew, starting with little spurts before the full blast.

The first difference with Strokkur was that you could stand absurdly close to it. We concluded that the winds must be extremely predictable, because the tower of steaming water always fell to the north instead of west and on top of us.

The second difference was that Strokkur blew often—Wikipedia claims it erupts every 6-10 minutes, but one interval was a mere 30 seconds.

And there were no warning spurts. It just exploded—ka-blam! like a Jack-in-the-box. I flinched and screamed every time.

Screenshots from the shaky video I took while flinching.

We went into the visitor’s center to use the bathroom and ended up staying a while because Daniel found a tractor to play on, with levers that actually moved!

I pointed to the sign because I thought it was funny, but it sorta looks like I’m trying to be rebellious by pretending to touch the reindeer lol.

Then we went on to Gullfoss Falls. Or, I guess, just “Gullfoss” since “foss” means “falls.”

Gulfoss took my breath away.

From a platform at the top, we watched Gulfoss pour over layers of rock…

…before plunging over a fathomless precipice.

In the photo above, peep the folks on the rock to the left for scale. We wanted to get to that rock, so down the steps we went and along the path. As we approached the falls, the immense spray created a rainbow that framed it beautifully.

The top falls were immense, but it was the huge drop at the bottom that fascinated me. The water plunged into a canyon, and it was impossible to see the bottom through the massive clouds of haze.

Remembering the glacier boat guide, I sat down to watch the falls disappear into the canyon, and contemplated nature in silence for a few minutes.

Now that we were in the golden circle, everything was pretty close to each other, and we still had time for one more adventure.

“Hot springs!” I suggested. I’d been longing to visit hot springs since I arrived.

So we went to some hot springs in a tiny town called Laugarvatn. But it wasn’t quite what I expected…just an expensive swimming pool with a pretty view of the lake. It didn’t seem worth it to me. So I decided, instead, to take a walk around the lake.

I followed the gravel drive past the swimming pool complex, and there was a charming hot springs flowing out of a little grassy cave, along a stream into a round pool, and then on into the lake.

I later learned that this pool is called “Vígðalaug” and is over 1000 years old—by far the oldest manmade-ish thing I saw in Iceland.

You see, when the Vikings came to Iceland in 874, they were pagan, but they had some Christian influences, including some Irish priests who were already living on the Island when they arrived, and some later Christian missionaries. Over the next 100 years, enough people converted that religion became a huge point of contention on the island. Some people even suggested dividing Iceland into two countries—one Christian and one pagan.

But eventually, they decided to all be Christians, and in the year 1000 the pagans were baptized in this very pool of Vígðalaug.

You might think I’d like to take a dip in an ancient baptismal pool, but not only was it roped off, but it was full of the strangest looking algae I’ve ever seen in my life.

However, it flowed into the lake, and when I put my hand in the lake, the water was warm!

I ran off to change into my swimsuit.

When I returned and explored the lake a bit more, I discovered that there were multiple hot springs underneath the lake, observable by a slight bubbling on the surface. But when I tried to hop in and swim, I received a disappointing lesson in physics:

Hot water is a different density than cold water, and merely floats on the top instead of mixing nicely.

So I ended up sitting in shallow water next to one of the underwater hot springs, mixing the water by hand. If I stopped, the hot water on the surface felt scalding while the cold water tickled my legs below.

But I loved the experience anyway. And the view! Across the lake to the snowcapped peaks of…was this Vatnajökull, the ice cap in the east whose glaciers I’d explored the previous day? It was in that direction, at least.

Simone commented on my last post and asked me to talk a bit more about the “endless twilights.” Let me try.

It usually wasn’t until the evening—say, 8:30 pm—that we even noticed the sun getting low in the sky. Then we might think about getting out of the lake, and getting dressed, and waking Daniel up from his nap, and trying to find a place to get groceries.

We’d drive to the sketchy grocery store in town only to discover that they’d closed at 7 pm, and we’d look up restaurants and find out they all closed at 9 pm, only one random hotel restaurant was open until 9:30, so we’d go there.

Only to find that there were a mere five items on the menu—a random soup, the fish of the day, and three kinds of pizza. So we’d all order the fish of the day, and be absolutely blown away by the deliciousness of it all.

(Wowsers, I still remember that fish. Maybe because up until this point I’d mostly been eating hot dogs and peanut butter sandwiches.)

And we’d sit, and munch, and talk, as the golden hour sun out the window never set, and in this way, we’d all completely forget that it was almost 10 pm and we’d overstayed our welcome.

Until finally, someone would think to look at their watch, and then we’d pull out our phones to find a nearby campsite. And we’d get into our camper van and drive south, missing our turn and having to double back. And at some point as we were paying for our campsite and finding a place to park, the sun would set, but it would do so in such a gradual way, leaving such a quantity of light behind, that none of us would notice.

And it wouldn’t be until about 11 pm as I walked back from the showers that I’d notice, “oh yeah, it’s getting dark.”

“Getting dark” would have to be enough for us. We’d go to bed when the sky was “getting dark,” because it would never be DARK dark.

That’s what I mean by the endless twilight—the stretch between 8:30 pm and midnight when the world was bathed in a long golden hour that faded softly into a bright twilight that lasted for hours, and really never quite turned into darkness.

Our campsite that night was in a place called Borg, and it wasn’t much of anything but we didn’t need it to be. In typical Iceland fashion, it was in the middle of nowhere yet right next to a pool complex.

We woke the next morning to truly glorious, break-out-the-short-sleeves weather. We couldn’t believe it, and we paced around the camper van barefoot, feeling the spongy layer of moss beneath the grass.

The main thing in the golden circle we still hadn’t seen yet was Þingvellir National Park (sometimes written as “Thingvellir.”)

Þingvellir is this magnificent area between tectonic plates, where you can literally see these canyons where the earth is pulling apart. Annie and I planned to hike around with the children while Stephen snorkeled between tectonic plates.

Unfortunately, Daniel was not particularly interested in hiking. First, he wanted to stay in the camper van and play with Legos. Then, when we finally got him out, he wanted to play on the large rocks that lined the parking lot.

At this point in the trip, Daniel had started to like me a little bit, but not enough for me to pick him up in such a circumstance and expect good results. So I offered to carry baby Hannah so Annie could carry Daniel.

My first experience baby wearing. Loved it!

I asked Annie to take a pic of me between tectonic plates, and Daniel decided he wanted to join too.

We hiked up to the visitor’s center, and learned some interesting history about Þingvellir. This area was the site of the old Icelandic parliament, which ran from 930-1798. In 1944, when Iceland gained independence from Denmark, the declaration of independence was signed at Þingvellir and there was a huge celebration.

I would have loved to spend more time at Þingvellir, hiking the trails and learning more of its history. But when Stephen finished his snorkeling excursion and we re-grouped, I was lured away from Þingvellir by the promise of something even more exciting:

Hot springs.

There was a free hot spring river called Reykadalur, Annie discovered, a 40 minute drive away. After hiking in about two miles, you’d come to a hot river where you could adjust the water temperature by moving further up or further down the river.

Yes please! Sign me up!

“But do you want to hike around here first? We can wait!”

I shrugged. “This will scratch my hiking itch.”

So off we went.

The hike was steep but very do-able. It wound up through these green hills dotted with plumes of steam.

“Look angry,” I said to Annie as I attempted to get a pic of steam rising out of her head.

We also saw this waterfall on the hike, which looked impressive in person but predictably looks teeny-tiny in a picture.

Then, just as we were about giving up hope that we’d ever get there, we rounded a corner and there was a long boardwalk along the river with happy bathers in the water.

I was a bit unsure of what I was getting myself into since in Oregon, a lot of the hot springs are “clothing optional,” but thankfully the rule in Iceland seems to be “wear a bathing suit please and thank you.” The only sketchy situation were the “changing booths” which, as you can see in the above picture, only offered two walls of privacy. We all had to respectfully avert our eyes from that area.

But I came prepared with my swimsuit on under my clothes, and I hopped into the gloriously warm water and sat in the suspended timelessness of the golden hour.

Without my watch or phone, time seemed mystical, irrelevant. It wasn’t, because at a certain point grocery stores and restaurants would start to close. But it felt that way.

But eventually, we pulled ourselves out of the rushing warm waters, climbing across the slippery rocks and up onto the boardwalk to attempt to change back into dry clothes with dubious privacy.

It can be done, if you hold your towel strategically.

I took this pic on the way back down the mountain. “What a cute family!” I said.

Then they took a pic of me. “What a cute single person!” they said.

I laughed.

Back at the camper van and thoroughly hungry, we went to try to get dinner somewhere. But it was around 9:30 pm, and while we went to several places that said they were open, we found that their kitchens were closed with only the bar open.

“I’m sorry,” said one kind waitress. “Everything closes at 9. Everything. You could try the next town over…”

Instead of going to the next town over, we drove the 50 minutes back to the capital city of Reykjavik. Surely, surely, if anything was open this late it would be in Reykjavik.

And while it took some drama and trauma to find, including going to closed restaurants and being directed to other restaurants, we eventually found pizza. Pizza! Four boxes of it—a whole pizza each, if we wished. We piled the pizza on top of the camper van stove, drove to the Reykjavik campsite where it all began a week prior, stuffed our faces, and crashed into bed.

We’d done Vik, and the glaciers, and the Golden Circle…now all that was left was to explore Reykjavik, go to the Blue Lagoon, and fly home again.