Skaftafell sits inside Vatnajökull National Park, on a strip of land where the ice cap’s outlet glaciers meet lowland once farmed for centuries before the park absorbed it. The area gives a rare vantage point in Iceland, a place where an ice cap, an active volcano buried beneath it, and an outwash plain shaped by that combination are all visible within a short walk of each other.

We wanted to reach Skaftafell, an area in Vatnajökull National Park where the glaciers come down close. Today was the drive east to get there. It turned into a day of small stops, waterfalls and cliffs right beside the road that almost nobody pulls over for.

This was the day we had been driving toward. We had spent the day before crossing the land the Laki eruption made, the moss-covered lava, and camped near the craters themselves. Today we went to visit the fissure that did all of it, out in the highland where it opened in 1783.

We left the campground at Vík and headed east on Route 1, aiming to reach Laki, or camp near it, and go into the crater country tomorrow.

An easy day. We started with chores on the truck, the small jobs that pile up after the highlands. The weather turned fine while we worked, so in the afternoon we drove out onto the Mýrdalssandur, the black sand plain east of Vík.

We woke at Básar to another clear morning. Básar is one of the huts and campgrounds in Þórsmörk, tucked in the woods on the south side of the valley, in the area called Goðaland. It is a green, sheltered spot, birch scrub and low trees all around, which is a rare thing in the highlands where most of the ground is bare rock and moss. The huts sit among the trees with the mountains rising straight up behind them and the river out in front.

Today was a driving day, the long way round from Landmannalaugar to Þórsmörk. We could have gone straight, but the straight way runs through rivers we did not want to take, so instead we looped out on the highland roads and came at Þórsmörk from the Ring Road side. It turned into a day of volcanoes, one after another the whole way, and we spent a good part of it counting how many of Iceland’s big ones we had seen.

We woke up early to perfect weather. The hard-core hikers, the ones doing the long multi-day trek to Þórsmörk, were packing their tents, eating breakfast, loading up, and heading off down the trail with everything on their backs. The ones left behind were the day hikers like us. The tourists on super jeeps would come later in the morning.

Today’s objective was the campsite at Landmannalaugar, out in the Fjallabak reserve. We took Route 26 north and then turned onto F208 North.

From Seljalandsfoss we carried on east to Vík and spent the rest of the day on the coast there.