Sunny day!
Updated: Aug 20, 2023
I couldn't believe it when I got up and the sun was out! I was lucky because it stayed out for almost my entire drive yesterday. My target yesterday was Vik, a town on the south coast. And, though the sun was out, it was super windy, which proved to be a problem later in the day. The scenery all the way down the coast was breathtaking. Yes, I'd driven this same route before, but it was so foggy that time that I couldn't see any of the scenery!
My first target was a lighthouse. The Hvalnes Lighthouse is another orange lighthouse, and it was so windy that I had trouble holding my camera steady.
I stopped a lot to take pictures, and I had to be really careful opening the door. It was very windy, blowing the campervan as I drove. If your campervan or car door gets ripped off by the wind, no insurance will cover it. Not even the cover-everything insurance I got. So, when I pulled over to take a picture, I held onto the door. Not a problem. So I stepped out, and the wind caught the door and blew it closed. Yep, it blew the door closed. Except my head was in the way. So my head got slammed into the doorframe, then I fell back into the drivers seat. It happened so quickly! And it scared me. I really was afraid for a few minutes that I might have a skull fracture. (Have you ever tried to check your own pupils for a light reaction?) I was bleeding from a cut above my eyebrow and I've got a lump up close to my hairline. I put ice in a paper towel and held it on my head for a while. The bleeding stopped pretty quickly, but it still hurt like hell. (I did not lose consciousness at all, btw.) After a few minutes, I decided that I probably wasn't going to die of a brain bleed and started driving again. Then I stopped to dig out the ibuprofen, which thankfully took care of the pain. I didn't get a black eye, but there is definitely some bruising. I may even have a small scar as a souvenir. (Note added later: I did get a black eye.)
So, I headed down to Diamond Beach. It looked like a different place with the sun out. The icebergs on the beach were much larger and just shone in the sun. I took someone's picture for them, and they reciprocated.
I could see the glaciers in the lagoon too, and did another picture trade.
As the ice flows from the bay to the ocean, it gets caught in eddys and if you listen, you can hear it crackling.
Oh, I ate a yummy lagostino roll at Glacier Lagoon. Yay, food trucks!
From there, the road starts to curve west. The sky gods were still shining on me (literally) and the glaciers just looked blindingly white. There were also clouds over them—I think that they create their own weather. I took pictures (of course) but they understate the brilliance of the white ice.
As I got closer to Vik, the clouds moved in and it started raining. Honestly, if I'd paid attention I might have camped further east, where it was still clear, since the Northern Lights were on the move last night. The KP index was the highest since I started this trip, and the app I'm using said that there was a 70% chance of seeing the lights. (The night I saw the aurora in Norway, the app said there was a 20% chance.)
By the time I got to Vik, it was drizzling and foggy. I decided to go to the grocery story and the giant Icewear store before I went to the campground. The rubber on the toe of one of my new hiking boots, purchased on day one at the Icewear store in Reykjavik, had started to come off the boot. They asked if I had my receipt—no, because I turned it in to get my tax back—but took my bank statement showing the purchase on that day at that store as proof, and they gave me a new pair of boots. Cool!
From there, I headed across the street to the campground. It was the busiest campground I've seen in Iceland, with probably 30 or more campervans there for the night. (Vik is a very popular destination.)
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