Campervan Adventures in Iceland: Day 21 - Hvammstangi , Kolugljúfur Canyon, Vatnsdalshólar, Hrútey, Reykjafoss

Man day 21 started off a bit stressful. We started driving towards our first stop, Kolugljúfur Canyon, when going over a pass the AdBlue light came on in the car. I remember last time I rented a camper the lady there was like if this light comes on you need to immediately get more AdBlue!! If you turn off the car you won't be able to turn it on again!! So we were in the middle of nowhere not close to any towns so Raymond was trying to figure out where we could get this and how far away it was. The only time I remembered seeing an AdBlue pump was in Reykyavik, which was kind of far away. 

So Raymond is doing research and I keep driving and he finds a gas station just over 100km away that has it that was on our way. But then it was like well how far can we drive with the light on? And what will happen if we go too far? It took Raymond forever to find the info but eventually we learned you can drive at least 1,200km and the light will turn red when it REALLY needs to be refilled (that is when the car won't start if you turn it off without refilling). So that was good to know, but it was a tad stressful!

When we got to the gas station we were trying to figure out how much we would need as you have to pre-pay with a credit card (you select the amount and then it charges you for what you actually use up to that amount) and we had no idea how large the tank was for it, so we did 10,000ISK as that is what we had been doing for gas and I laughed so much when it didn't even use 2,000ISK. 

So after that adventure we were off to the canyon and saw a sign for the Icelandic Seal Center which was not that far off our path so of course we had to stop by. It was tiny, but we found lots of good maps for NW Iceland which was nice. It was in Hvammstangi so we wandered around the town. There were lots of these rock people all over. 

And we found a nice path following this stream upriver. 

After lunch we made it to Kolugljúfur Canyon which was a lot of fun. 

The canyon is just over a km long and you can walk the whole length on the one side (where we parked)

Then you could walk across the bridge

And walk down closer to the water

This was so cool! The very green water and the very red rocks

Our next stop was Vatnsdalshólar which was an odd area. Lots of these small hill, but not much information about them. How did they form? Why are they there? They seemed to be loose gravel

Then it was off to Hrútey Island to wander around

It started off as a nice walk, but then I felt bad because there were a lot of geese nesting and we kept startling them and we tried to get out of there asap so we could leave them alone!

Then on to the last stop of the day - Reykjafoss. You park at this horse farm and then walk from there

It was really beautiful!

There was also a hot spring near here which we didn't realize, but it was pretty full by the time we got there. 

We decided to camp close-ish to here instead of driving farther as it was getting later so we headed to Camping Varmahlíð for the night. This was pretty nice grassy in a small bit of woods campsite. There was also a public pool a 5 min walk through the woods so after dinner we headed there for a swim and a soak in the hot tub. A perfect way to end a pretty nice day. 

12.1km walked