re: Has anyone here visited Iceland?

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Lesbian retreat?

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Exactly, its where I go with my butch girlfriend.

Now, in seriousness, there are fantastic hiking trails, snorkeling, volcanoes - it is a great place.

For the record, I went with my now ex-boyfriend.

Nobody cares.

They have Arctic foxes. They're black in the summer, one ran across the street and we thought it was a cat but we were middle of nowhere.

Man, I'd go for 2 weeks, personally. In all honesty you can go for a month and barely make a dent in there. The western fjords are so remote but may have the most dramatic landscape of it all.

Y'all just set up camp wherever? Is it all national park land? Any issues with knowing where you can and cannot set up shop? I'm assuming it was pretty remote where y'all were at.

Pic 1: 1st day driving, saw a cool trail. Walked it from the road in the background and led into a cave with cool blocks of ice.

Pic 2&3: Kirkjufell falls with the mountain in the background. We set up camp close to the mountain on the opposite side.

Pic 4&5: Raudasandur Beach in the very northwest. This is where we had our seal encounter. The 2nd pic is when the tide was out. When the tide leaves in the evening and the sun is right, the sand becomes a light red/pink. Absolutely stunning

Pic 6: Camping outside of Husavik with Puffin Island in the background.

Pic 7: We set up camp at a campground in the north before we went rafting. Took a piss and saw this sunset (at around midnight).

Pic 8: Puffin Island. All the black dots are puffins. You can see a man with neon pants and another in black. They're both trying to catch puffins.

Pic 9: A waterfall we saw from a solid 2 miles away. We stopped, stepped over a barbed fence, and walked across soggy and squishy grass (it's more like moss) and came to this waterfall.

Pic 10: At Stokksness, there was a part that had a pretty solid fence to not pass. There used to be old coast guard buildings at the end of the little peninsula so it's off limits. Well, my friends and I decided to squeeze past the fence and we eventually came across this completely hidden whale skeleton. This was the highlight of my trip. Just walking enjoying scenery and you come across a fricken WHALE SKELETON. It was unreal. I tried to take a a bone with me, but they were literally like 30 pounds each. If anyone knows who the famous photogrpaher Chris Burkard is, a week after I took this (I took like 8 selfies too haha) he put one of this exact skeleton on IG. He and I actually had several messages back and forth about it.

Pic 11: Jokulsarlon lake. Pieces of the glacier break off and float through the lake to the sea. Some of these chunks are massive and they're constantly changing. Right after I took the pic, the big one in the middle flipped upside down.

Pic 12,13,14: Skogafoss. I walked all the way under the waterfall and it felt like I was in the middle of a cat 5 hurricane. Super experience. Then there is a giant staircase that leads up the side.

Pic 15: Hidden waterfall by Seljalandsfoss. The main waterfall gets the attention of most, but right down the road there is a little cave that leads to this and it's awesome.

Pic 16: Famous church in Reyk

Pic 17: Me and friend selfie snorkeling in 34 degree water

Pic 18: My friend touching both continents

Pic 19: Big Lebowski bar in downtown Reyk

As far as camping is concerned, this is what I'll say. We went to Scotland and they have a policy that you can literally set up camp ANYWHERE. It could be in someone's private yard, there are no rules. We camped 3 times in abandoned castles. So we wanted to do that in Iceland. Iceland isn't as open. With that said, I did LOTS of research about it going into the trip. I asked locals, even talked to a police officer. Basically, here's the deal: Iceland has virtually ZERO trees, so it's tough to start fires. So the few trees they have, they don't want you ruining them. And they live by the policy "leave it as you found it." So they worry about the land, but it's not like they are against it per se. So we would just find tons of rocks and build a firepit basically, and buy wood from grocery stores every opportunity we would get. Then disperse everything once we were gone. Twice we built fires on the beach.

The first night we camped like 150 yards from Kirkjufell right off the road. We had some German try and tell us it wasn't an actual campsite, but the language barrier made me say "Sorry, don't know what you're saying." I basically did, just did not care. But after that, we became more and more remote we wouldn't see anybody or hear anybody and it was no problem.

As long as you're respectful, don't leave a mess, and camp somewhat away from the main road, you're good. We stayed at a couple of campgrounds because we would roll into a place at like 11pm and were too exhausted to look for a camping spot.

Anything cool in the houses? Were they just abandoned or were they vacation houses?

Jakabol might be hiring.