Iceland. The most amazing outdoor environment I've ever seen. The whole Jock clan (me, Doc Jock, Kids 10, 7, 4, 2, ... and the inlaws for a good part of trip) were there from Sept 20-28. During this time, we spent a grand total of 2 hours in Reykjavik. The rest of the time (minus the Blue Lagoon) was in the countryside. We rented houses on AirBNB because of our group size. Weather was good for the most part, plus or minus freezing, 12 hours of light, 12 hours of dark. Dress properly and it is fine.

I'll do the pictures sequentially for the most part. These are my crappy iPhong pics, but if I wait for the good camera ones to get edited and ready...well...we'd be waiting a while. Enjoy!

Flying over Greenland...someday...



This waterfall was a couple miles down a ROUGH road from our first place. My oldest found it on GoogleEarth. Can't find a name. But it was amazing.




This is typical of how you get to the sights in Iceland. No safety rails here. More on that later.



Godafoss




Dimmuborgir lava fields; we hiked in them while the snow fell.




Hverir boiling mud pits. Only stayed a minute.




Dettifoss. Most powerful waterfall in Europe. The hiking to and from was slick; lots of elderly Japanese tourists falling down.






Whale museum in Husavik. This is an adult blue whale carcass. Over a decade old and still smelt.




Northern Lights. Only saw them one night due to cloud cover. Cool, if slightly overrated.




Thingvellir National Park...where the American and Eurasian tectonic plates are moving apart at 2MM a year.




Gullfoss. My oldest's obsession for over a year. Extremely hard to photo well with an phone. Amazing.






Selangifoss...where you can walk behind the waterfall. Very steep and stick. More elderly Japanese tourist bite it.




Glacier Lagoon...iceberg city




Vatnajkull Glacier. Our 2PM tour got messed up, so they gave a private sunset tour instead. Simply unreal. Trig, our driver, is also a rescue driver and did a great job. Went from sea level to 4500' in 45 minutes. Beautiful.








Black Beach




Blue Lagoon on our last full day. It is Iceland Vegas. I like Vegas, but it was a bit weird going from the countryside to it. Kids love it though.



OUTTAKES

Safety 1st Kids! Iceland is a survival of the fittest type place.





CamperVans everywhere




There is a story here




Make Iceland Great Again!




Transportation Envy




8 peoples' crap




Eating out is super expensive, so there was a lot of this.




Icelanders are supposed to be some of the tallest people on earth. Doesn't explain their construction preferences at all.




There it is. Hope y'all enjoyed it! We sure did.

Still waiting on my souvenir.

Those are some incredible pics. Now I wanna go to Iceland!

Quote:

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There is a story here

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Story Time!

In a lot of places in Europe outside of bigger metropolitan areas, they will just have a hole in the ground instead of a toilet. In some places, they may even have a rope that you grab on to to go #2. So when folks that haven't seen a toilet much, or at all, actually use one, they can break it if they stand on it.

Here's a pic I snagged in London at a construction site with a heavy Polish labor force. Its a bit more "animated" than yours, but the point holds in both.

Speaking of the 4yo, GuitarSoup was kind enough to photoshop him in at Godafoss.

My family (me, wife, our kids 12, 10, 8 and my wife's brother) were there at the same time as Jock. We even had the same flight home to DFW. I have to agree that it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Rainbows.....everywhere, waterfalls....everywhere, short little horses......everywhere, multi-colored wooly sheep....everywhere, black sand beaches, crazy alien looking landscape that changes every few miles. The native Icelanders are also very friendly. Eating at restaurants is definitely expensive but we did it anyway on a few occasions when it was unavoidable; had the best Fish & Chips of my life at a place by the Old Harbour. Beer & Booze is very expensive. Their local beer is called Gull and its pretty tasty. I never saw it for less than the equivalent of $10 for a pint; and it was always the cheapest beer available. I saw bottles of Corona at one place for $14/bottle. We LOL'ed at that!
We focused our sightseeing on the southern and western parts of the country and we stayed in the same
Air B n B every night. Before February of this year Iceland wasn't even on our radar of places to go but before we left Reykjavik to come back home, we were already planning our return trip. I have a couple of photos that people are urging me to enter into photo contests. When I do, I'll come ask the OB for some votes, Lord knows I've voted for enough people on here over the last 12 years!

Great pics. Looks like you and your family had a great time. Iceland had been on my bucket list but now that I'm in the cold north it's lost a little appeal to me. Too bad about the northern lights, they're unfortunately highly unpredictable. Often times its just a green glow in the sky and I seem to just ignore it. however, I can count on one hand the number of times it's lit up and danced and taken my breath away. Last week was a pretty good showing, enough that I stepped out with my camera.

I didn't take any landscapes/animals on my phone, so here are some stolen from the mother-in-law's facebook.

Throw away your camera, hire your MIL.

While scrolling all of those family pics all I could think of was "Man this guy sure likes to breed!"