Iceland

Day 1
Our flight out of Memphis didn't leave until the afternoon, it was weird to just be having a normal Saturday morning knowing that we'd leaving later on this trip that we had been planning for 8 months!

Day 2
Our flight out of Chicago was eventful to say the least. After finally taking off almost 3 hours late, we were about 45 minutes out when the captain came over the intercomm and said that we had turned around and were going back to Chicago because one of the doors in the back of the plane was "making a strange sound." After a lot of confusion and frustration at the airport we finally got booked on an Iceland Air flight leaving the next afternoon and we got to a hotel around 4:45am. We slept as long as we could, until around 9am. Kaitlin hadn't slept any before the flight so she only got around 4 hours of sleep night 1.

Portillo's

We got some lunch in Chicago then went back to the airport around 1pm, even though our flight wasn't until 7pm.

Day 3
We made it to Iceland! We each slept 3-4 hours during the 6.5 hour overnight flight and landed at 6:30am Iceland time. Having lost a day, we had to skip a couple of hikes we had planned and we had a lot of driving to do and things to see to get caught up on our itinerary.

Day 4
We made it to our AirBnB around 1am the night before, driving about 5 hours after dinner and 11 hours total that day, we've already driven almost half way around the island! But we were back on schedule and Day 4 turned out to be one of our favorites!

Day 5
Another long day yesterday, we had a 2hr drive from the baths and got to our AirBnB around midnight. Luckily our itenerary was a little easier for day 5.

Day 6
We finally got to bed at a recent time and got to catch up on much needed sleep. Day 6 would include one of our biggest hikes of the trip!

Day 7
Another late arrival at our AirBnB last night but day 7 ended up being another one of our favorites!

Day 8
Last night we arrived in Vik and the AirBnB that was our favorite of the trip and we got to stay for 3 nights. It was nice to not have to pack everything up the next morning!

Day 9
We finally get to slow down a little bit. Due to the bad weather (and how exhausted we were by this point) we decided to skip two hikes we had planned, both of which were to get to glacier viewpoints and with all the rain and low clouds we knew we wouldn't be able to see anything anyway.

Day 10
Fimmvörðuháls day! This was our biggest hike of the trip, 15.5 miles point to point and over 4100 feet of elevation gain over some very challenging terrain.

Day 11
Luckily we would get to sleep in this morning, because the Fimmvörðuháls hike had taken us from 9am to 7:45pm, then we had a long shuttle back to the car in a huge bus that crossed two rivers, then we drove almost 2 hours to our next AirBnB, arriving after midnight.

Day 12
We really felt like the trip was winding down at this point, and we were tired and grateful for the slower pace.

Day 13
We had planned to visit another highlands area this day but the weather was bad and all our research told us it wasn't worth going to unless it was a clear day, so we went straight to Reykjavik and had an easy day of shopping, museums, and food.