Around Hvolsvollur

Thursday, September 8

Iceland is an island whose perimeter is followed by Route 1, the Ring Road, and most of the country’s developed areas are situated along this road.  Today, we headed toward the interior to see some of the nearby area’s natural features, principally waterfalls and the volcano, Hekla.














 

Unfortunately we had heavy rain all day, and despite lots of driving, we saw very little.  The clouds seemed to touch the horizon pretty close to the road, and while we saw occasional specters of mountains, we were pretty much left to guess where the volcano must be, relative to our position at any given time.  

The countryside is pretty barren, with dark volcanic soil and rocks, isolated farms, small churches, sheep and horses the only things to see from the road.  Other than areas of plantings around farmhouses, the terrain is largely treeless. 

The road surfaces range from two-lane paved to chunky black gravel to washboard-like regular ridges (really!), and the changes from one type to another are frequent and unannounced.  There is also a network of “off road-like” roads that we did not venture down, despite the fact that our rental car has 4-wheel drive.

We eventually decided to cede victory to the rain and head back to our warm, comfortable and DRY apartment early in the afternoon.  A wall of windows in the apartment allowed us to watch as it continued to pour all afternoon, and we were happy to be right where we were. 

Things look a bit better for tomorrow, so our hopes are high for a better day.