Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Last week I started sharing the photos from this amazing trail in the Icelandic Highlands. Here's the next installment, where the weather turned... Icelandic :D Laugavegur Trail Day 2   (Sept. 7): Hrafntinnusker Hut to Alftavatn Hut You remember that lovely view from the hut from the previous evening, right?   Conditions in the morning were... changed. The wind was coming up, the mist turning to rain, and it was clear a) why the tent sites have rock walls around them, and b) that I was really glad I'd chosen to stay in the huts. From the start I was wearing my rain gear, my camera optimistically still on the shoulder strap though under its cover. Spoiler: that didn't last long. Within half an hour, the wind and rain had both picked up, I'd stowed the camera, put on the poncho (with a lot of tucking to keep it from flapping, and the rest of the day took cell phone photos. Despite the conditions (and inability to see the mountains that surround the caldera through which ...

September 6-10 this year, I hiked Iceland's famous "Volcano Trail," the Laugavegur track. I had mixed weather, but the first day combined amazing scenery with good weather, and as a result I have far too many photos to do more than the one day in this post (besides, I haven't finished editing the rest of the hike, let alone the following 2 weeks in Iceland). The excitement started with a 7:30 a.m. bus from Reykjavik. I arrived at the bus station as the sun was about to rise. It's a small city, so the bus depot was only a 15-minute walk from my hotel. It's a 3 1/2 hour ride to the start of the trail at Landmannalaugar, so we had a much-appreciated "comfort stop" partway.   The bus ride was definitely part of the excitement, as this was my first chance to see much of Iceland beyond the city. I managed to score a front seat (always my goal due to motion sickness issues), which allowed for some good photo ops. As far as I could tell, we drove around a...