Campervan Adventures in Iceland: Day 5 - Skaftafellsjökull, Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon, Gígjagjá, Skógafoss

Day 5 started off a bit cloudy, but perfect weather for a walk. Not too cold or windy so we headed out to check out Skaftafellsjökull - the glacier an easy walk from the campsite. 

You could get fairly close to the glacier by walking over all the rocky gravel, but it was freezing! So much colder because of the glacier so we spied until we froze then headed back

On the way back to the car we saw a pair of Rock Ptarmigan! Their legs were very fluffy with feathers and they walked around like chickens!

Our next stop was another canyon and the drive there was beautiful!

The road to Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon is gravel, and there is a turn off to go to the upper parking lot that is down an F-road, but the main road was fine. A bit tough in spots as there was a lot of new gravel so it was not the best in this car, but easy enough to drive through. 

This canyon was nice, but after Múlagljúfur the day before it was a bit of a disappointment. Definitely not as nice as that one, and nowhere to sit and enjoy except at the parking lot where you can't really see the canyon. I do think it is probably prettier when all the grass is green, but still Múlagljúfur was so much nicer!

On the drive to our next stop we entered the Katla Geopark and drove through this giant lava field Skaftareldahraun which was so cool! I loved it, though these photos 1,000% do not do it justice! We were driving through and I wanted to stop for a photo so we did at the first parking spot and there was a small roped off trail to wander through the rocks!

All of this bumpy lava covered in moss was so pretty!! I loved that we got to wander through a bit of it! This was not on my list of places to stop, but I am so glad we did as it was a highlight of the trip!

We also stopped at Laufskálavarða which was...odd. It was just a place for people to make piles of rocks? Most other places had signs specifically warning you not to do that! We weren't really sure if that was the case or somehow the rocks ended up like this naturally as there wasn't much info here, but afterwards we found a sign someone else had posted that we missed stating that was the idea...

Someone did put this pile together which was nice and showed some of the colors we were seeing splashed across the mountains

The story of Katla

Our next stop was Gígjagjá or Yoga cave! The road down to it was gravel and not very good, lots of big potholes and stuff so we parked early and walked the rest of the way. It was flat and sand/small rocks the entire way

This is right on the beach but the water was really far away

Hiking back to the car

Our final stop of the day was Skógafoss where we camped

There was so much mist coming off the falls! Definitely needed a raincoat or you would get soaked!

The campsite was...very basic. It was literally just the parking lot, though at the end where we camped there was electricity if you needed it. This was definitely the worst campsite we stayed at. The facilities were...they felt dirty even though I saw them clean them. It served its purpose, we ended up staying here two nights as there were no other campsites open in the area (or else we would have gone somewhere else), but it wasn't very nice. And a tad confusing as I missed the tiny sign to even know you could camp here on the way in. 

A good day, lots of fun adventures, and 18.3km walked