Before we get tired: Ísland

More Iceland, get hyped! Day 4 turned out to be pretty epic, and honestly probably my favorite day of the whole trip, so it gets a post all on its own. But anyways, you still have to humor me and go turn on more cliche Icelandic music.. you knew it was coming, go find some Björk.

Day 4
So picking up where we left off, we woke up in Seyðisfjörður so psyched on the clear skies, and mesmerizing fjords, so naturally we geared up for a proper hike nearby so that we could soak up more of the views. The hike was on the north side of Seyðisfjörður, and followed a river, up the valley, with tons of waterfalls cascading down into the river, and damn was it beautiful. If you ever turned around to look behind you all you could see was ocean and fjords jutting up to the sky, it was epic. Matt claimed on their blog that this was his favorite hike to date, and I might have to agree with him on that, it was just so amazingly beautiful, and I was amongst truly the best of company, and I don't know how anything could ever be better. As Matt also kindly notes in their post, the trail ultimately leads up to a lake, but we had hiked in for 2.5 hours already, and had long passed the snowline, and were beat (and mistakenly didn't bring our lunches) so we turned around at this point, with no shame of not seeing the lake ;-) At the end, we were perfectly greeted by a field of Icelandic ponies, Mel and I kind of freaked out, but god they're so damn cute. Pictures can try to explain this perfect experience..

View from the parking lot looking towards where we camped.

The sunshine was cooperating from time to time.

Beginning of the hike.

All smiles, duh!

Going up.

And up..

And then up some more..

I wonder if they want to sell me their house?

Hi mom and dad!

Suns up, pants down!

I wasn't kidding about the amount of waterfalls..

Yeah this is real life.

Just another waterfall.

We're chilling in the distance for perspective.

The weather didn't cooperate the whole hike, however.

New friends and old friends hiking fjords together.

And again! I love self timer photos!

The view looking back to where we started.

Making friends with Icelandic ponies!

Ponies for everyone!

So still on day 4, after our stunning hike, it was onward towards Skaftafell National Park. We drove a long way this day, but the views are so incredible that it's hard to notice how long you've been in the car. In fact, we took my favorite happenstance 'pit stop' of the entire trip during this drive. Basically the lighting was perfect, and it made the fjords look perfect, and the weather was calm and it was just great. Check out the photos of our awesome break..

Dave takes amazing pictures.

So naturally lots of pictures ensued.

I think we all wanted to move into this house in the distance.

Yep, it's still real.

I want to go back.

And the silly pictures are about to start.

Basically I learned that you can take panorama shots with your iphone..

Perfection!

And then we reached our ultimate destination of the day, Jökulsárlón http://goo.gl/maps/gc5xo. Jökulsárlón is a massive glacial lake that feeds into the ocean, it is incredible!!! Thanks Wikipedia in advance, it developed into a lake after the glacier started receding from the edge of the ocean, and is continuously growing. The ice is breaking off from the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier, and you can see the dome/tongue in the distance, it is an incredible sight and truly like nothing I have ever seen before. We explored the area thoroughly, playing with the ice on the black sand beach, and just taking in the views of this electric blue lake that feeds glacial water straight into the salty Atlantic, it was mind blowing, truly. Afterwards, we managed to camp right alongside the lake in a lovely secluded spot, to end quite possibly my favorite day of the whole trip. Now prepare yourself for a photo bomb!