Iceland Trip Part 1 - Getting There
We’ve learned a couple of things about making traveling easier. The first thing we learned is to make it so that the “end” of your long vacation is a couple of days after you’ve gotten back. You’ll inevitably have a flood of email, mail and household things you have to take care of, not to speak of unloading the rig, unpacking, doing laundry and organizing your gear. That is made all the worse if you also have a flood of work tasks to start the morning after you get home, still groggy and exhausted from your trip. The second thing we’ve learned is that it works the opposite way too. It’s really nice to have a full day off before you have to leave to get all the last minute things done before the early morning departure. At the least, it allows you to get a full night’s sleep before hitting the road. Sure, all this means you’re whittling away at your vacation time, but the trade-off in terms of stress is amazing. Now imagine if you complete a work project a full week ahead of time and have nothing planned after that? Well, you figure out a way to leave early! That’s what happened with our trip to Iceland.
We spent the weekend a week before our departure date getting ready, did final touch-ups on Monday and Tuesday, packed the bimobil on Wednesday (and answered two final work emails) and took off 3 days early for our trip. Once we realized we were leaving early, we had to figure out where we’d spend our newly found time - a slow drive through Germany? Explore Denmark? That’s what much of the time from Saturday to Tuesday was spent on doing - extra trip planning. We decided to spend a couple extra days in Denmark exploring in-between a couple of identified destinations where we’d wander and photograph.
Our goal for the first day was to drive from Didam to Aabenraa, which is just north of the Denmark-German border. We’d planned for a longer drive time-wise, but while there seemed to be just as much construction work on the Autobahns as we’d seen in 2024 (does construction in Germany ever stop?), there were way fewer outright delays (perhaps one of the benefits of driving on a work day), so we made pretty good time. Time enough to walk into Aabenraa for dinner. The campground was just outside the town, so we had a nice long walk by the City’s beach to give our legs a workout from the long drive and a long walk back afterwards for dinner to settle.
The next day we took the long way (read: driving back roads) up to Valsgard, near where we wanted to do the next day’s hike. We must admit, we found the Danish landscape surprisingly beautiful with impressive rolling hills and much less densely populated than the Netherlands. At our second camping spot, we again took a local walk by the campground, visiting a near-by estuary.
Our first planned destination was the Rebild Bakker National Park. We were attracted to it by its rolling hills and diversity of landscapes. It didn’t disappoint.
Early on our hike we came across one of several historic cottages in the park and spent a bit of time photographing it and the immediate area.
We then set off trekking through the gentle hills. The trails wandered around and over the landscape and we decided to pick one loop trail and follow it. The grasses were just lovely.
We eventually swung around and up into a forested area, where everything changed dramatically.
The light was lovely and the views enticing.
We eventually popped out of the forest and the trail ran along a farm field with wheat near-ready to harvest.
Even wandering along the farm field, the setting was beautiful. Just the way you want to start a vacation!
We eventually completed our hike and set off to find a place to stay. We were going to have to cross the northern part of Denmark at some point, so I had a couple of campgrounds on the coast in my back pocket. But I had an even better plan. As we drove up to Aalborg, I pulled over at a rest stop and called a spot I’d found on the Park4Night app to see if they had a space open. Sure enough, the guy did so I told him we’d be there in an hour.
An hour later, we had a nice spot in a winery near Vadum to spend the night. I have a feeling that when we get back to the US and are traveling again, we’ll be joining Harvest Hosts so that we can spend more nights at farms and wineries than at RV campgrounds (that is when we can’t free-camp on public lands). They’re much more pleasant. Despite being a bit tired from the day’s hike, we couldn’t resist an after-dinner walk through the countryside!
The next morning we headed over to the west coast and started driving northward. Once I realized during my research of Denmark that there were plenty of WWII structures from the Nazi’s Atlantic Wall in northern Denmark, I set my sights on visiting one or more of them. We swung by some in Lokken, but the parking lots for those locations were packed, so we headed up to Hirtshals where we would eventually be departing and where there was another major bunker complex - the 10th Battery.
There were a lot fewer people there, so we parked and headed out.
A couple of the bunkers had been renovated - one developed as The Bunker Museum Hirtshals to explain the bunker complex and its related complex history, the other to give more of a feel of what it was like to live and fight in one of these structures. The rest were unmaintained. Some were filled in to prevent entry and others were visible, but inaccessible. Some you could enter, with warning signs that you do so at your own risk (a quick glance inside confirmed it was not the type of place we wanted to “explore”). Nature is doing its best to take over these sites.
The bunker complex stretches along the coastline, and at times you’d never think you were in a maze of bunkers, tunnels and shooting positions.
And then, you suddenly come across a concrete structure, battered by war and time.
As I’ve noted several times, WWII, which barely seems to be a part of America’s memory any more, has a real presence throughout Europe. They remember what war was like and why aggression must be stopped. I wish America’s leaders would develop an equal understanding of war’s true horrors, but also when facing the possibility of war, knowing that it may be necessary to preserve democracy (as opposed to expanding some fictitious American empire or as a show of “greatness”).
The complex is surprisingly large, with gun emplacements, ammunition bunkers and living quarters spread out over a vast area along the coast. On a beautiful day, it almost seems surreal.
We ultimately arrived in the Hirtshals Campground a day early, so on the interim day we wandered through the town. Twice. And the coastline. Once (the wind along the coast was pretty intense). We anxiously awaited our day of departure.
On Tuesday we boarded the ferry Norröna at the Smyril Lines dock and headed out on our 3-day, 2-night journey to Iceland. The weather was lovely and that first afternoon we spent wandering around the ship, inside and top-side.
We didn’t take a lot of pictures of the ferry itself because . . . it’s a boat and I think if you’ve seen one ferry, you’ve pretty much seen them all. But at one point, while we were sitting down having a latte, the windshield washers turned on and I just had to pull out my iPhone to play a bit!
The route the Narröna takes passes by the Shetland Islands (which we did not see) and makes a stop in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands. Our stop in Tórshavn on the way out was short, so we could not disembark.
Which was just as well because the weather had turned nasty. While a lot of people decided to go outside for a look-see, most returned fairly quickly given the passing showers and much colder weather.
It wasn’t long before we took off from Tórshavn and headed through the Faroe Islands. As we moved away from the islands, the rain stopped, so Ann and I bundled up and grabbed our point-and-shoot cameras to see what might await us.
The views didn’t disappoint. They offered plenty of mystery and at times dramatic light.
Sometimes the land forms seemed so close you could touch them.
And sometimes the view was just beautiful.
As we pulled away from the Faroe Islands, it seemed like the weather wanted to stay with the islands. When evening came that second day, the sun decided to revisit us.
he next morning was one of excitement. During breakfast we saw the first glimpses of Iceland in the distance. A couple of hours later, we were instructed to clear our cabins (with 15 minutes to throw everything into the bimobil) and we headed on deck to enjoy the passage into the fjord leading to Sey∂isfjördur.
It was a good introduction to the mountainous landscape we’d find throughout Iceland.
And the plethora of waterfalls seemingly visible at every turn.
Finally, the getting there was done. Time for the real adventure to begin.
If everything goes according to plan, this post gets released on Christmas Eve. Here’s wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!