Recommended overnight stops on Iceland ring road
 

Planning planning planning for an upcoming trip in August 2015. I need help figuring out good places to overnight as we do the ring road w/ two adults and two kids (age 12 and 8). I am swamped with information from the internet and guidebooks and all the very difficult to keep track of Icelandic names. I have a poor sense of how long it takes to get from place to place. I have been to Norway (not driving) and all over Hawaii (driving) and I do understand how mountains and shorelines and such can make a route much longer than it seems. I'd like to break up our drives in to shortish chunks with breaks mid-day. I would also ideally like a couple stops where we stay in the same place for 2 nights or so. I get an idea of the things we want to see - but they seem pretty scattered and so picking a "base" is what is giving me fits.

What I have so far:
Day 1 Thursday - arrive early morning. Reykjavic. Wander around, get food, get hotel settled, nap, see maybe one museum or botanical garden. Shopping. Pool.
Day 2: Reykjavic: Friday. Vioey and ride bikes. Harbor. Shopping. Pool in later afternoon.
Day 3: Saturday: flea market, depart Reykjavic to>.....heading clockwise?
Day 4 Sun
Day 5 Mon
Day 6 Tues
Day 7 Wed
Day 8 Thur
Day 9 Fri
Day 10 Sat
Day 11 Sun
Day 12 Mon
Day 13 - Tues Golden circle - overnight in Reykjavic?
Day 14 - Fly home in the afternoon

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or ideas!

Here's a sample itinerary you might consider:

http://www.icelandsagatravel.com/ind...ring-road-itin

Check out the independent itineraries on this website.

We've done the Golden Circle in a day when we were docked on a cruise. We hired a private tour guide so we could maximize seeing the most in the day. It was amazing how much we actually did see. Our guide was able to navigate around the tour busses.

https://www.extremeiceland.is/en/sel...elf-drive-tour

https://guidetoiceland.is/best-of-ic...oad-of-iceland

http://www.visitreykjavik.is/travel/driving-iceland

Ring Road is 832 miles long!

Good luck. Hope this helps your planning. I can give you the guide's name we used if you are interested. :-)

hi, scigirl,

generally driving around the ring road is quite easy - it's a proper A road - but when you get off the ring road onto the B roads you can have problems with gravel, single track bridges etc, so they can add time to your driving times. OTOH even in August the day light will last a long time in the evening which means that you can pack a lot into a day - for example we were still exploring the Golden Circle sights at 9pm one night.

Heading clockwise, a good first stop might be Vik, then somewhere further east near the inland iceberg lake at Jokulsarlon, [? Hoefn?], followed by Lake Mytvan, Aykureyri, and then Gulfoss or nearby for the Golden circle. looking at the routes taken by companies like Discover the world can help as they give ideas about where to stay on your way round and how long to stay in each place.

I would allow a whole day for the Golden Circle as if you want to walk long the gap between the two geological plates [the european and american plates meet there] that can take a little while to see, as well as the geysers, the waterfall and all the early parliament sites. You can also go diving there if you wish!

Have fun with your planning!

Thank you! You've given me some good tips - I'll keep working on my plans. Any other ideas are most welcome!

oops - that's anticlockwise, but you get the idea.

My one piece of advice is to not try and do too much. When I drove around Iceland I did it in a similar amount of time as you have, I missed out on the West Fjords and Snæfelssness which was a shame but necessary as I didn´t want to be rushed.

I would travel anti-clockwise, and look to spend as much time as possible in Skaftafell and the North East area around Myvatn, planning my itinerary around these goals. If it is good weather I would do the Golden Circle first, it would be shame to leave it until the end of your trip only to discover the weather that day is not good.

Final tip, for car rentals I recommend carsiceland.com as they had the best prices when I was looking.

So with the kind help of a friend-of-a-friend and the information here, and reading books and blogs, I've modified and come up w/ the following:

Aug 6 - Rey (arrive early am) - explore local area
Aug 7 - Rey - local area
Augu 8 - Rey - local area
Aug - 9 golden cirlce, overnight Hvergerdi area
Aug 10 - overnight "K6" area
Aug 11 - overnight Hofn area
Aug 12 - Myvatn area
Aug 13 - Myvatn area
Aug 14 - Husavik area
Aug 15 - Akureyri area
Aug 16 and 17 - Stykkisholmur area
Aug 18 Borgarnes
Aug 19 - back to Rek and fly home.

Ordered a good waterproof map. Ordered a couple more guidebooks. Filling in the blanks of things to see along the way between stops. Figuring out what special tours we want to do (e.g. whale watching) and where. Getting rooms booked. Checking rates on rental cars (resevered w/ Sixt but I need to do some more head-to-head price comparison). Bought some long underwear while it is in season here so I won't have to hunt for it in stores in August.

I would be surprised if you needed long undies in August. We were there in July-August and arrived to find that they were in the midst of a heat wave. it got a bit cooler after that, but the main problem was rain, not being cold.

Annhig thanks - just long sleeved long underwear in lieu of other long-sleeved shirts. They are super lightweight and packable. I think part of my caution is that last August we spent 2 weeks in the Netherlands (northern) and it was cold and rained on us every single day. I could have used a thin warm layer to help me out. I think the weather may be similar to what we experienced, arguably a bit colder (it was unusually cold and rainy for the Netherlands). I have been to northern Norway in July and there was still snow and I needed layers. Fortunatley we have good rain shells for layering purposes as well.

scigirl - i interpreted long underwear as long-legged pants not vests! My mistake. though if you've got some thin silk ones, they might be a good thing to pack too.

I understand your reason for concern about the weather, but you need to allow for its being quite warm as well.

I'm planning my trip for the last two weeks of July - a similar itinerary. I just listened to a selection of the Icelandic Sagas (borrowed from the library) to help me get some history and perspective. Fascinating stuff :)

You do know that a large minority of Icelanders believe in the little people and planning permission to damage their houses is required (and seldom given).

Yes, as do the Irish. They've refused to cut down a lone hawthorn tree to build a planned highway. Eventually the highway plan was moved.