Today we made our way to the Westfjords, the southern part. The goal was be to make it to Patreksfjordur campground and amazingly we did.  It’s was about 8 hours of driving. Google projected it as a 6.5 hour drive.

It seems Google didn’t count on some of those main roads being compacted dirt or gravel roads. Which the locals, both car and large delivery trucks, fly down leaving massive dust clouds in their wake. With us not being local and being in the RV, we weren’t going that fast on those roads. The rattling inside the camper alone while traveling between 30-40 mph (sometime slower) was causing enough of a racket to raise concerns that we might lose some parts off our shiny new rented camper. Not to mention the fact that you never know if some random wayward sheep or un-guardrailed cliff would be waiting around the next blind turn. It takes a bit longer to stop the RV than a car.

I also don’t believe they accounted for all of the hairpin, serpentine winding dirt roads through the mountaintops and fjords. Just so no one at home worries about us being reckless, none of the roads we traversed were rated as F roads, which require a 4-wheel drive to take.

We got a pretty late start leaving today. There was some much needed sleep to catchup on. And, of course photos to be taken before leaving. The drive was mostly coastal, along the coast line on Route 60, with some occasional crossings overland, either deep into the fjord, or over the tops of them via mountain roads.

Dirt road over mountain pass
A gentle dirt road leading to mountain dirt road, only slightly winding. Sorry about the streaks this was a quick shot taken from the cab window.

The hardest part about traveling through Iceland is the raw beauty of the place, which seems to appear everywhere. At every turn of the roadway, a mountain, valley, or vast plain surrounded by mountains appear. We just want to stop at every one of those turns to enjoy and linger awhile, embed it into our memories and capture that with a photo.

When we left in the morning, we could see the mountain range that we were heading for today. And at various points as we made our way northwest, we could see them getting closer and the snowy mountains we departed from appeared started in the distance. If you are following on a map, we are about as far west as you can get in Iceland in the long peninsula north of Snaefessness.

Road and mountains in the distance
Looking back at the mountains from where we came. On the horizon you can see the white capped mountains from the Snæfellsnes Peninsula.

Happy National Icelandic Day, I hopes yours was a great as ours!