Laugavegur/Landmannalaugar Trek, Iceland - Day by Day Account

Of course it wasn't all down. Flat in Iceland is Icelandic Flat, meaning rolling hills of up and down.

The biggest drawback of trekking in remote places around the world is that we terribly miss our chocolate lab Munson. When this cutie came down the trail, we couldn't help but shower him with tons of affection.

By the time we got to more river crossings it was old hat. Still just as cold, but we started to take them with a lighter, less fearful approach.

Everyone kicked in to help. This meant taking your time washing dishes or a more enjoyable task of shaking up the dressing for dinner.

We were told that there would be very little wildlife on the trek so I didn't bother carrying any big lenses. The only indigenous mammal is the arctic fox and with a group as large as ours I didn't hold out much hope for a siting. To my surprise, the warden's hut housed two baby fox underneath it. They were given to the wardens from a local farmer who I believe had killed the mother. Unfortunately, no zoo would take the pair so they were adopted by the wardens. Watching them play made for a great diversion and a wonderful photo op.

Our last meal was indeed a treat. Generous portions of grilled lamb. Jon Gauti expertly cooked it as professionally as he guided us through the volcanic landscape. No one left the table hungry.

With the trek basically over, it was time to celebrate with a few cool brewskies. There are, as I have pointed out, many advantages to trekking where accessible by trucks.

There were two options for ending our trek. We could have stayed at the more tourist sites that had hot springs, but we opted for the less populated remote site. Given the popularity of the trail, we actually didn't meet that many people outside of our groups on the trail and there were very few people at this campsite.

Although the weather looked to be improving, and indeed we saw the first sun for days, we were told bad weather was coming. Not tourist bad as we had experienced along the trail, but Icelandic bad. Horizontal rain whipping in your face bad. We were glad to be missing that. Indeed, after we got off the trail we met a few people that were a day or so behind us on the trail and they weren't able to complete the trek.

Michael Fohr, many time Joints in Motion participant and trainer is always good for a post trek show in the form of acrobatics.

Technically, we were on a six-day trek, but the last day was just a short day hike. Instead of going with the group, Jennifer and I took the time to explore the area around the campsite by ourselves.

We had one last stop on the way home, the Skógafoss waterfall. Absolutely beautiful, we felt a little cheated that we didn't get to see it in better light.

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