Today we planned on seeing the northern end of the Laugavegurinn hiking trail. This required 40km or so north on a secondary though paved road until we came to the start of the track to Landmannalaugar. The first few kms of this track were surprisingly smooth and I got going at an unusually fast speed for our truck on this kind of road (30mph), which turned out to be a bad idea. The sudden appearance of a series of pot holes which I could not avoid, some violent rocking of the camper, some loud crashing noises from inside the camper, and we have two cartons of eggs upside down on the kitchen counter with yuk oozing out of the cartons. It took 30 minutes to clean up that lot. The result, 4 destroyed eggs, 6 that were cracked enough that we decided to have them for lunch (fried) and a reminder to take it easy.

So our journey to Landmannalaugar continued. It was a spectacular drive mostly through a landscape of volcanic debris, huge flows of old lava and plains of volcanic ash, and a number of river crossings. Eventually arriving at Landmannalaugar to find a few buildings, a convenience store setup in two old buses, a rock covered tenting area and numerous vehicles.

Nina was keen to do some walking so after studying the special map of day walks we decided on the Laugahraun walk of 4.5km. I think we had both expected one of those tame little 2 mile walks that most US National Parks have created to entertain senior citizens but this turned into a real hike. Staring with a steep climb/scramble over the sharp rocks of an old lava flow, a number of large stretches of snow, and to top it off the length of this walk was much closer to 7 km than 4.5. But after all that, a great walk. Did I mention that the area is thermally active and that on this walk we passed numerous steam vents puffing away.