We were up a bit before 07:00, having slept fairly well.  We didn’t get ready in a hurry like yesterday, as breakfast wasn’t until 07:30 anyway, and we had no firm events with set times today.  In fact, all we had on the itinerary for today was a ton of driving (6.5 hours), with some short stops here and there, and no hikes.  At breakfast, quite a few people were there, and we wondered if there were multiple buildings all belonging to the same hotel.  [It turns out there are two buildings, the one we were in (with 6 rooms) and one other (with 4 rooms).]  Perhaps one of the bus tours had just contracted for their guests to be able to get dinner and breakfast here.  At our table there were two Americans, who were leaving tonight, and two Germans (or at least German speakers).  The food was quite good, and the bread was the best so far this trip.

We left just before 08:30.  Our first stop was just 20 minutes away, at the Vatnsdalshólar viewpoint.  We were back on the Ring Road again, after being off it for all afternoon yesterday.  There were low clouds again this morning (it seemed to be a pattern), but even with that, it was easy to tell that this was a picturesque spot.  There was just one other couple there, walking up the stairs as we were walking down.  We hopped back in the car for 30 minutes, getting off the Ring Road yet again, onto a gravel road again, to visit Borgarvirki, which was labeled as a “Viking fortress.”

But, as we’d read, this was a natural fortress, not a building, so we managed our expectations accordingly.  Essentially, it was a huge rock pile on top of a hill.  Still, it was interesting to see something put together by vikings, and the views were good.  At first, just two other people were there, but then a bus showed up right as we were leaving.  We were a little surprised that a bus was driving around on the gravel roads.  Rather than backtrack on Road 717 to the Ring Road, we went counter-clockwise around the small lake there, going north on Road 717 and then south on Road 711.  This route was totally empty, as all we saw were several horses, including some young ones, quite close up.  We’d seen hundreds of horses on this trip, but never in a place where we could easily stop and take their photos.  The road we were on was empty and straight, so we could see no one was coming and it was possible to stop.

We decided to skip Hvitserkur, a lava rock formation, as we already had enough on our plate today, and we figured we’d already seen several lava rock formations and we’d see plenty more.  So our next stop was about 40 minutes away at Byggðasafn Húnvetninga & Strandamanna.  We had this in our notes as a viking museum and shark hunting museum, and also not to expect too much.  As we approached the parking lot, there were Arctic terns everywhere, and they seemed to be trying to attack the car, flying right by the windshield and trying to peck at the hood.  When we got out of the car, we walked quickly to the front door of the museum.

Inside, the person who took our payment told us the museum had two sides, one for the viking stuff and one for the shark fishing stuff.  He told us that people usually spent more time on the shark fishing side.  We started with the more historical part of the museum, which had replicas of living quarters, old knick knacks, some old boats and vehicles, basically a little bit of everything.  It was kind of like if a couple hoarders passed away and their kids opened a museum with everything they held onto.  It wasn’t bad or anything, but it wasn’t like there were any items that really stood out and were main attractions to get people to come to the museum, either.  Once we walked over to the shark fishing side of the museum, the guy who had taken our payment came in, and he talked our ears off about the subject.  We now understood why people spent more time on this side.  The fishing boats were built from driftwood, mostly from hardwoods from Siberia that drifted across the pole to Iceland via polar currents.  Amazingly, there were fires on wooden boats, covered with tar, where people on the boats didn’t know how to swim.  We didn’t need any more reasons to not want to go shark fishing in Iceland, but this museum gave us several.

The Arctic Terns attacked the car again on the way out, and we thought to take some video of the experience.  Shortly after leaving the museum we turned off of the Ring Road onto Road 68, which we assumed marked the border of the Westfjords.  Comparatively very few tourists visit the Westfjords, instead usually opting for a one week trip that goes around the Ring Road.  We had two weeks, so we added on a couple days in the Westfjords, a couple days in the Snæfellsnes peninsula, and a couple days in the Highlands.  Interestingly, as we drove around on Road 68, along the shoreline in the Westfjords, we did start to see a good amount of driftwood.

We stopped every so often at some of the more photogenic areas.  There were constant inlets that we were driving around, so we had constant views of mountains and water.  We didn’t have blue skies, but we didn’t have rain either.  We stopped briefly at the sorcery and witchcraft museum in Hólmavík.  We had read that the museum wasn’t the greatest, but we wanted to stop and stretch our legs a bit.  When we were parking, the car was the loudest it had been, and we were really starting to get worried, especially since we were entering the Westfjords and getting further and further from civilization.

The museum was pretty much what we expected, but at least we weren’t disappointed.  And we did get to stretch our legs a bit.  While we were in Hólmavík we got soda, gas, and snacks at the N1 station.  We looked under the car and shook it a bit, and everything seemed to be consistent with the suspension on the right rear wheel.  We drove west on Road 61, away from the coast for a bit, until we stopped at Steingrímsfjarðarheiði, an old house in the middle of nowhere with plants on the roof.  The parking lot was on the other side of the road, but there were cars coming only every 3-5 minutes, so we weren’t sweating crossing the road.  The house had an open door, and to our surprise, no one had ruined the inside.  The roof had some sort of netting underneath the soil and plants, we wondered if that was for the roots to wrap around for structural integrity.

Before we left, we read up on whether a squeaky sounding suspension was a safety issue, and literally everything we read indicated no, so we just convinced ourselves it was fine and to stop worrying about it.  We joked it would be like the Little Miss Sunshine van.  Gervidalsárfoss was a nice change, as we got out of the car for a bit to check out the waterfall.  For Iceland we’d gone quite a long time without stopping to see any waterfalls, since Goðafoss mid-day yesterday.  We also hadn’t done much walking today.  Two other vehicles came after we stopped - apparently we were setting the trends today.

We were back in the fjords now, zig-zagging in and out of the inlets and peninsulas.  One fjord, Mjóifjörður, actually had a bridge, so we went across that to save some time.  But before we crossed it we got out of the car and walked around a visitor area for a few minutes.  There were quite a few wildflowers, and great views of the fjords and the bridge itself.  Our next stop was Litlibær, which we called Little Bear.  It was a historic old building that was now a café, but it had closed just minutes before we got there.  So we just viewed it from the outside for a bit, then got back on the road.

We were slowly but surely getting to the end of our drive, and we were ready to have a proper meal.  Crystal looked for places in Ísafjörður, which was the “big” town around.  They sounded good, but then Justin asked if there were any in Bolungarvik, where we were staying overnight.  We’d seen the legal limit for driving under the influence was 0.02, and Justin felt more comfortable eating somewhere within walking distance of our place.  Fortunately there was one that seemed to fit the bill, so we decided to just skip Ísafjörður.

There was a mix of sun and clouds, but mostly clouds, as we continued on our way.  We stopped briefly when we saw Eyrarkirkja in Kolbeinseyri.  We also made a quick stop just north of Kolbeinseyri, rounding the northern tip of the peninsula, with one fjord, Seyðisfjörður, on the left (east) and another fjord, Álftafjörður, on the right (west).  From the same spot we could also see Súðavík, where we had in our itinerary a stop at the Arctic Fox Center.  Given that it was almost 19:00, we just assumed it would be closed, and we didn’t stop.  

Out in the water we could see a large ship (maybe a cruise ship?), but we couldn’t tell if it was coming or going to Ísafjörður.  Speaking of Ísafjörður, we just drove straight through it, and decided to check it out a bit in the morning, as we’d be backtracking through the town anyway.  We got into Bolungarvik around 19:30, so late, but nothing crazy like a couple of our nights so far.  The town (more of a village, actually) was incredibly scenic, with huge mountains on every side that wasn’t the ocean.  Bolungarvik is the last town in the northwest end of the Westfjords, so basically the end of the road.

We were staying in a place called The Little Cottage, and it was a charming small two-story house in a residential area.  We dropped our stuff and then walked to the place for dinner.  The restaurant wasn’t so much a restaurant as it was a dining area inside a gas station.  But we could walk there, and they had food and booze.  The woman who took our order was from Canada.  We asked her how she ended up in this part of the world, and she said it was for school, where she was studying coastal resource management (or something like that).  When we told her we lived in Tenerife, she said that their prior chef was from Tenerife.  We asked her why there were so many people from Tenerife working in Iceland, as it made no sense to us.  She said for her, relative to Canada, minimum wage is about triple, and rent is less.  So we wonder whether people from Tenerife can make and save more money than at home, even accounting for the crazy price of food and gasoline in Iceland.  

For dinner, Crystal got fish and chips, Justin got chicken wings and chips, and we each had a Gull Beer that was on tap.  After we finished we chatted a bit more with the woman, and she told us how she’d lived near Tofino, near Calgary, and then Montreal.  We discussed the missing indigenous women all over Canada, and the signs we saw about it in Winnipeg.  They were closing up, so we walked back to our place around 21:15, happy to be out of the car.  We enjoyed some rum with the lemon Pepsi Max we got at the gas station restaurant, and planned some more specific stopping locations for tomorrow (as we had just 4-5 spots specifically listed), and then we went to sleep around 23:00.