I  C  E  L  A  N  D

Electing to take an unguided tour of Iceland was an easy vacation choice for me. I had been fascinated with aspects of the country for a very long time -- its remoteness, summer's midnight sun, its 100 percent literacy rate, its relatively comfortable climate, its modernity for an isolated country with fewer than 300,000 people, its shifting geography -- but I think I mostly wanted a departure from the warm climate I live in, in Austin, Tex., into a colder area, more like my home state of Wyoming.

The easiest time to visit Iceland is the summer, where the always-light days eased navigation and allowed more hours for photography, though the weather didn't always cooperate. It also allowed more waking hours in general, and that proves useful in a few of the cities -- Icelanders have a bit of a reputation for wildness. Strong-willed and independent, and genetically homogeneous, due generally to the country's isolation in the North Atlantic.

I wanted to cover a lot of ground and so I took the Ring Road, the (sometimes paved) route around the

The maps on each page trace the route.

entire country, with the goal of seeing it all before returning to Reykjavík in time to wrap the trip with a bang at Iceland's Independence Day celebrations. The map helps place the variety of shots in perspective: This is a country that has a lot of different looks for a relatively small area. Geologically Iceland is the youngest place on earth; more than one-third of the lava that has come to the earth's surface in the past thousand years has arrived in Iceland.

The country sits atop the intersection of two tectonic plates, and so volcanoes and upheaval have always characterized Iceland. As recently as 1996, earthquakes and a volcanic eruption in the Grímsvötn area (under the massive Vatnajökull icecap) shook southeast Iceland. After a month, when farmers thought that the risk of flooding had past, a flood of 3 trillion cubic liters of water washed from the icecap over Southeast Iceland, demolishing farms and bridges and hurling ice into the ocean. There's no telling when or where the next eruption will happen, but I bet it keeps residents on their toes...

Navigate with these:

Start by heading to Reykjavík...

or, skip to regions:
Reykjavík ~ Snæfellsnes ~ North Iceland/Akureyri ~ Mývatn/East Iceland ~ Vatnajökull ~ South Iceland ~ Reykjanes/Bláa Lónið

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