Reykjavik to Isafjordur, then Sudureyri

The drive from Reykjavik to Sudueyri takes about 6 hours. It was our first experience driving in Iceland. Some things are a bit different there. The roads are great, but there are places where they narrow enough that only one car goes through at a time. Because of the many hills and curves there are lots of places where it is totally blind. John figured it out pretty quickly. One car pulls to the side while the other goes through.

The highway through Reykjavik. 

Road narrowing to one lane.

At some point every day the clouds would roll in and the sky would look intensely threatening. Rarely did anything come of it. Sometimes we got a few showers, sometimes fog obscured our view, but usually the clouds passed over quickly and we were left with sun and blue sky. We were very lucky with weather. We had a few days where we had some rain, but for the most part the weather was great. We had many sunny days and some mix of sun & cloud. Overall though, the weather was good enough that we were able to do what we wanted. Bad weather never interfered with our plans. 

Passing this guy was a challenge. That bit of plastic hanging off the bale would flap and hit the car. We were happy to get by. 

I have a lot of photos of fields with bales, mostly because I like how they look. I was also interested to see that there are different colours of wrap. We saw white, black, pink and green. I don't know if the colours meant something or if it was just what people had on hand. I liked the variety. 

The route we took had us driving on a gravel road for about 22km. That was an experience! We were both happy to be back on pavement. Little did we know then that gravel roads are not uncommon in Iceland. We travelled on a lot of them, some in better condition than others.

Safety hut

Blind corner warning. There are lots of those. 

The other interesting thing about driving in Iceland is that the roads follow the coast, which means you follow every fjord. You drive along one side and can see the road on the other side, but you don't get there until you've gone to the end of the fjord and drive around. It's very cool, but is time consuming. Fortunately the view around every corner changes and stuns you with its beauty. I think we said "Wow!" more on this trip than in our lives combined. You will see lots of pictures of the fjords in later posts.

Looking across the fjord. Eventually we drove on that side too. 

We crossed this bridge a number of times while in the West Fjords. I called this a "fancy bridge". 

A strange collection of old cars, like a junk yard. In the middle of nowhere. 

Waterfalls are everywhere. Each one is beautiful in its own way. We never got tired of seeing them.

Every community, no matter how small, had its own church. Usually they looked like this one, white with a red roof. I never got tired of seeing them, either. 

We stopped in Isafjordur on the way through to Sudureryi. There isn't much happening in Sudureryi (population about 350) so we thought we should check out the "big" city (population 2600) along the way. We stayed in Sudureyri as we couldn't find accommodation in Isafjordur, likely because of the big running festival happening in the area. Sudureyri is about a 20min drive from Isafjordur.

                                                              Coming in to Isafjordur. 

I love this bowl near the city.