Starting Iceland’s Ring Road: West and North
Of all the trips I’ve planned, Iceland was hands down the most challenging—and the most rewarding. Planning an itinerary for the Ring Road was no easy feat. Most blogs I found listed places of interest but didn’t provide much detail about the proximity of sites or how many you could realistically visit in a day. Additionally, the unpredictable weather in Iceland can drastically alter your plans at a moment’s notice. The trip we ended up taking looked vastly different from the one I had initially mapped out.
The initial blog post for this trip was so lengthy that I decided to break it into a four-part series to make it easier to read and follow. In this series, I’ll dive into each day of our trip, detailing where to stop and what to see. If you’re looking for a quick reference, each post will include a timed-out itinerary with distances and drive times between each location. I also created a route map with every stop for you to download and use on your own trip!
My hope with this series is to help you plan a seamless, weeklong vacation around Iceland’s Ring Road, sharing tips and insights to make your adventure as smooth as possible. Traveling to Iceland is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and it truly is like no other place we've visited before. So, let's kick off this epic journey with the first two days, starting the drive around the Ring Road with the west and north regions of Iceland.
Arrival & Camper Pick-up
When I was initially researching our trip, I didn’t realize that the airport was a solid 45 minutes away from Reykjavik and that many of the camper van rental companies are located in Keflavík. Since we were traveling from Europe, our flight landed in the early evening. This meant that it was too late for us to pick up the camper van and hit the road, so we opted to stay at the Marriott property right next to the airport in Keflavík rather than taking a cab back and forth from Reykjavik for the night.
Before we arrived in Iceland, I had planned on doing the Ring Road counter-clockwise so that we would hit all of the South Coast sites first. The day we arrived, we checked the road conditions on road.is, and driving was not recommended anywhere other than the West and Northwest due to a giant wind storm that was hovering over the entire island. The storm was predicted to hang around for several days, so we decided to reverse our itinerary so that we would arrive in the Southeast and South once it lifted.
I was nervous about this approach because a few friends had just returned from Iceland in June and got stuck in the North the entire time due to weather. If you know nothing about Iceland, most of the main attractions are located in the the South and what’s known as the Golden Circle. Prior to our trip, we had found r/VisitingIceland to be a wealth of information, and the general consensus was that if road.is says not to drive, you had best adhere to the warning.
It took us a couple of hours to pick up the camper van and get ready to hit the open road, which is something you need to pad the schedule with. The reason it takes a minute is because they do a thorough inspection so they know every ding and scratch before you drive away. Side note: if you’re looking into doing a Ring Road trip, I wrote [this post] that goes way more in-depth about camper considerations and camping tips.
We snapped a few pictures in the hotel parking lot with our tenement on wheels, which we affectionately dubbed as Hermie, and started our journey on Route 1, otherwise known as the Ring Road.
Day One: Walter Mitty, Kolugljúfur Canyon & Hvitserkur
As we headed north from Keflavik, the views were dreary as rain and fog pelted Hermie, cutting visibility close to zero. Since the wind was so extreme, we decided to drive past the Snæfellsnes Peninsula and add it onto the end of our itinerary once we were back in Reykjavik. Based on my research, I knew that we would need to go grocery shopping at some point and we figured near Reykjavik would be our best bet. Our goal for the first day of driving was to end up somewhere near Hvitserkur as that would place us solidly in the northwest quadrant where the winds were the tamest.
We made our first stop in Borgarnes to get groceries and fuel up, both on coffee and gas. This is a fairly decent-sized town and is where you can take Route 54 to go to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula or continue north on the Ring Road. Our coffee stop was connected to the Bonus grocery store and they had a bunch of pictures of Ben Stiller on the wall with what looked like the ocean view that was right in front us. It turns out the cafe was used for filming in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, so of course we snapped a photo in the same spot.
As we continued northward, the weather became more clear. Our first official sightseeing stop was Kolugljúfur Canyon, a couple of hours after our grocery run in Borgarnes. One of the nice things about traveling to Iceland in early September is that there is still a decent amount of daylight during the day, with the sun setting close to 8 p.m. This gave us a full day of exploring. Kolugljúfur Canyon is about 20 minutes off Ring Road on an easily drivable dirt road. There is no admission or parking fee for these waterfalls, and you can explore pretty much wherever around the falls. Since we were there in the off season, we only had to share the falls with a handful of other people. We spent just under an hour taking photos of the falls and walking around before heading to our next and final stop of the day: Hvitserkur.
When I was researching Iceland, my main goal was to find intriguing landscapes for us to photograph, and I knew we would have to make time for Hvitserkur, a 50-foot-tall basalt arch in the middle of the ocean. Like Kolugljúfur Canyon, Hvitserkur was completely free to visit and park. There are two ways to look at Hvitserkur and we did both. If you head left from the parking lot, you’ll reach an observation area where you can look down upon it. This is the way we first went, so when we saw people walking around and on Hvitserkur (we happened to visit at low tide), we knew we needed to find a way down there.
Signs around the observation deck advised against accessing the beach by going down the steep cliff, so we walked back to the car park and followed a gentle trail to the right that led to the arch. I’m so glad we took this route because not only did we get amazing photos of the column in golden hour light, we also saw numerous sheep and seals along the way!
As the light started to turn to lavender, we drove towards our campsite for the evening, arriving just after dark. We chose to stay at Camping Varmahlíð, which was right off the Ring Road. There were a few other campsites in the area, but this one had some of the better reviews and had electrical plug-ins, which was a must for our camper’s heater to function overnight. Once we found a space to park, we sent a WhatsApp to the campsite owner and he came by our site to collect the fee. After a simple meal, we went through our photos of the day while relaxing on Hermie’s little sofa in the kitchen area.
Day Two: North Coast, Goðafoss, Dettifoss & Mývatn Mineral Baths
We woke up decently early the following morning (ah the joys of not being jetlagged from international travel), so we were able to hit the showers before much of the campsite was stirring for the day. While we were relaxing the night before, we decided to take a slight detour off the Ring Road to head up to the north coast via Route 76. This wasn’t something that came up in any of my research, we just thought it may be neat to see what was up in the fingers instead of taking the direct route along the Ring Road.
The drive was beautiful and we saw many sheep and even a rainbow! One of my favorite parts about Iceland was seeing all the sheep roaming freely about the island. We were there just at the start of Réttir which is when all of the sheep are rounded up into pens for the colder months. As it inched closer to afternoon, we stopped in Siglufjörður, a small fishing village on the coast, for a quick, picnic-style lunch in Hermie. The town was cute and even had a brewery, which we would have stopped in had it been open.
After our little detour, we made our way to Goðafoss, kicking off our unofficial waterfall day. Something I didn’t realize before we traveled to Iceland was how little walking would be required to see most of the sites, and Goðafoss was no exception. There were two giant, free parking lots right next to the falls so that we only had to walk about five minutes. The falls were lovely and the clouds were definitely cooperating with us to give it a moody vibe. Across the street, there was a little gift shop, so we were able to use the restroom and grab some much needed caffeine before hitting the road again.
Fully fueled, we merged back onto the Ring Road and made our way to our next stop, Dettifoss, another famous waterfall in Iceland. What makes Dettifoss special is that it is Europe’s most powerful waterfall; it was even featured in the film Prometheus! It’s gigantic, spanning 330 feet across with a 144 foot drop into the canyon below. There are two different sides you can view Dettifoss from, either the west or the east. It is possible to drive between the two, but with the way the roads are situated it would have eaten up several hours in the itinerary, so we chose to forgo that option and view it from the west side only. Dettifoss shares a parking lot with another waterfall called Selfoss, so naturally we had planned to see both… until Mother Nature intervened.
This part of Iceland looked completely different than what we had driven through the previous day, and even that very morning. Everything looked so alien and inhospitable. The landscape was made up almost entirely of lava rock with patches of lichen reaching up towards the cloudless sky. We both remarked how it would make the perfect set for a movie on Mars. This area of Iceland is a geothermal hotspot, so there were mineral baths and hot springs everywhere.
As we turned onto the road that would lead us to Dettifoss, we noticed the path ahead of us looked hazy, almost like something was on fire. We pulled up the traffic alerts quickly and saw that there weren’t any for the area other than wind, which it had been showing since we landed in the country. When we pulled into the parking lot and opened our doors, we were greeted by a huge gust of wind. Our camper van rental company had warned us to hold on to door handles whenever we opened them so that the wind couldn’t take them and bend them backwards and incur a service charge. Yes, that is how freaking strong the wind is in Iceland. While it was windy, it wasn’t anything above what we had been through the previous day.
We walked the short path out to Dettifoss and started taking pictures, and this is when the wind picked up. Dust and dirt was flying everywhere, and we had to look directly at our feet to keep from getting it in our eyes. The path to Selfoss branches off from the Dettifoss path at about the halfway point, and without saying a word, we both knew that Selfoss would be a no-go with all of the dust. Back in the safety of Hermie, we brushed off our faces and examined the damage. We had dirt everywhere, in our eyes, in our hair (despite the fact we were both wearing beanies), and inside our ears. The day was inching closer to sunset, so we decided to backtrack and unwind in the Mývatn Nature Baths.
Despite the insane wind, the baths were still open, though they were probably much less crowded than normal. The views of the valley were incredible and the milky turquoise water was soothing after a chaotic end to the day. As the sun began to set, we showered off and made our way to the campsite. We stayed at Vogar tjaldsvæði since it was only a 10 minute drive from the baths and had electrical hookups.
Route Map
This map shows the full route of our 8-day Iceland Ring Road adventure. This post focused on the first two days of the trip in the West and North region, including Kolugljúfur Canyon and Goðafoss. Download the full interactive map for more details:
Itinerary with Driving Distances
DAY 0: Arrival
Depending on flight arrival time, either pick up camper and proceed to Day 1, or spend the night in Keflavík or Reykjavik, depending on where your camper rental company is located.
DAY 1: Western Region
START: Keflavík or Reykjavik
STOP 1: Borgarnes (115 km from Keflavík)
STOP 2: Kolugljúfur Canyon (133 km from Borgarnes)
STOP 3: Hvitserkur (70 km from Kolugljúfur)
END: Varmahlíð camping (155 km from Hvitserkur)
Total distance for the day: 473 km
DAY 2: Northern Region
START: Varmahlíð
STOP 1: Siglufjörður (107 km from Varmahlíð)
STOP 2: Goðafoss Waterfall (112 km from Siglufjörður)
STOP 3: Dettifoss Waterfall (99 km from Goðafoss)
STOP 4: Mývatn Nature Baths (48 km from Dettifoss)
END: Vogar tjaldsvæði (6 km from Mývatn)
Total distance for the day: 372 km
Next up: Day 3-4: Exploring the Stunning East and Southeast of Iceland
As we wrap up the first leg of our Iceland Ring Road adventure, we’ve explored the stunning northern landscapes, from the dramatic Kolugljúfur Canyon to the iconic Hvitserkur rock formation and the relaxing Mývatn Nature Baths. These first two days have set the stage for an unforgettable trip, giving you a taste of Iceland’s unique and diverse beauty.
But the adventure doesn’t stop here! In the next part of the series, we’ll continue driving into the eastern and southeastern regions of Iceland. Get ready to discover more of Iceland’s natural beauty at Stuðlagil Canyon, the charming town of Seydisfjordur, and the stunning sights of Diamond Beach and Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon.
Related posts
Part 2: Iceland Ring Road Days 3-4: East and Southeast
Part 3: Iceland Ring Road Days 5-8: South, Golden Circle and Reykjavik
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