Campervan Adventures in Iceland: Day 13 - Þingvellir National Park, Þórufoss, and Akranes

Day 13 we woke up to very grey skies, but got up and ready to explore Þingvellir National Park. There are multiple parking lots and we parked at P3 since it was the closest to camp and at the far end of the park (and then walked to the other end and back). By the time we got to the parking lot it was misty so we put on all our rain gear and headed out

First you walk through this canyon which was fun

Where you can see Gálgaklettur where they used to hang people.

Then you get to Öxarárfoss

And here we have Drekkingarhylur where women were drowned

I enjoyed this area a lot, but I imagine in the summer when this is all green it is even more beautiful!

Then we got to the super serious law rock! Where the old parliament would meet and recite the laws before they were written and learned lots about the old government and such

This is the main viewpoint at the far end from where we started (but where a lot of tour buses were parked). By the time we got to here there were sooooo many people! Trying to walk up the pathway to here was just a solid block of people in tour groups that refused to make room for those of us going the other way which was pretty annoying. I don't care about there being a billion tour groups of people, but when you literally cannot even walk up the path they are going down? Yeah, that is annoying. No common courtesy!

walking back down wasn't so bad, we had gotten there just as a bunch of buses did, but I was glad we got all the big sites done before the massive tour groups came through!

We wandered down to Silfra where you can go snorkeling between the two tectonic plates

Then down to the summer residence of the Prime Minister

And Þingvallakirkja

Where the official measuring units were kept - the ell was the measurement from elbow to fingertip, though since this varied they marked a length 20 ells long on the side of the church with a yardstick 2 ells long for measuring fabrics and such.

Then headed back to the car. By the time we made it back to the car 2-3 hours later we were pretty wet! Or our rain gear was dripping even though it never was raining hard, more lots of mist/light rain

Next stop was Þórufoss which you can see from the parking lot

And you can walk down close to it!

After that we headed back towards Mt Esja, but saw this church, Mosfellsjirkja, and headed to check it out.

It is probably my favorite church we saw as it was so pretty! And I loved the design

Next we stopped at Mt Esja to do that hike...but it was soooo foggy you couldn't see two feet so we decided to skip it and just head to Akranes where we were going to camp and see what we could see. Or have a short day and get to camp early.

First up was the Akranes lighthouse

There were so many fun birds here to spy on and was a lot of fun

Then off to Sólmundarhöfði a golden sand beach

Along the beach there were all these photos like look how nice Akranes is!

And then this one with the dog peeing in the back which made me laugh so much!

After wandering along the water I looked at the map and there were ducks listed at Garðalundur park so we headed out there. There were ducks, but no fancy ducks