On a lark, my travel buddy Cassidy and I decided to throw together a little trip to Iceland. With nothing but a van booked, we hopped on a flight and touched down in the land of fire & ice. We spent 8 days driving the ring road and camping wherever the day took us. We saw volcanoes, fjords, sheep and reindeer, relaxed in thermal pools, ate ramen noodles and stayed up all night to shoot the midnight sunset. It was a bucket list trip and I can’t encourage you enough to visit this special island. I would go back in a heartbeat. Below is the first half of our itinerary and some of my favourite images by Cassidy Unholzer & myself.

Sunset at Fjallakaffi Campground in North Iceland

West Iceland Ring Road

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West Iceland Ring Road -

We landed in Reykjavik, took a shuttle over to Kuku Campers to pick up our nugget mobile. We chose the most budget friendly option, a small van with a large sleeping pad and kitchen essentials. We learned that a sand storm had closed the ring road going South-East, so we headed North-West. Stopping first at the Glymer waterfall parking lot for a short nap to get our wits about us. Once we felt rested we hiked up towards Glymer but decided against the raging river crossing to see the waterfall up close. We drove another hour or so north and camped near Varmaland. The weather was rainy so we didn’t feel guilty at all about sleeping for as long as our bodies demanded— which ended up being 12 hours.

After waking feeling incredibly rested, we continued our journey north. After a couple hours of driving and stopping to take photos of whatever we thought was pretty, we realized we missed an important turn and were driving in a peninsula directly to the ocean, away from our planned route. This happy accident turned into a lovely stop at Grettislaug Thermal Pools where we had the place entirely to ourselves! After our dip we continued along the North section of the ring road, passing by sharp mountains, driving through Akureyri, the second largest city in Iceland and stopping briefly at Fossholl before camping in Laugar.

North Iceland Ring Road

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North Iceland Ring Road -

Waking in Northern Iceland, we had a big day exploring around Mývatn Lake. We hiked up to the Viti crater and wandered around the lava fields at Vikraborgir. It felt like we were on another planet. I could not believe my eyes. Our next stop was Dettifoss waterfall, the most powerful waterfall in Iceland. Unfortunately, our time at Dettifoss was shadowed by the most insanely dusty winds I’ve ever experienced, which took a bit of the magic away.

We camped nearby at Fjallakaffi, which gave us the creeps initially because it looked like the literal set of Midsomer. It ended up not being creepy at all and we made some awesome new friends. We stayed up till 2:30 shooting photos and when we did decide to go to bed, ended up going sleepless because the howling wind was rocking the van back and forth to violently. After realizing sleep would not be possible we got on with our day, gorging ourselves with a 6am buffet breakfast before heading toward the beautiful Stuðlagil basalt column canyon.

The last stop in North East Iceland was the Stuðlagil basalt column canyon. As a passenger, the drive to this spot was one of the scariest things I’ve ever experienced, it felt like we were taking our lives into our own hands. But we made it! You have to park and hike to see this, so it wasn’t as busy as some of the other spots which was nice. The colour of the water changes depending on the time of year, we would have loved to time this out to be there at sunset or sunrise, but in June that would be the middle of the night and we just didn’t have it in us to stick around all day.