Brandon + Liz / Epic Ring Road Engagement Adventure in Iceland

Brandon and Liz brought us along to Iceland for their epic-as-cuss Ring Road engagement adventure earlier this year. Holy freaking moly!! What an insane adventure. Where should we even start?

We were last in Iceland only a couple months ago in February, back when the entire country was covered in a sheet of snow and ice, and we had been itching to get back to the place as soon as we stepped foot on the plane back to Boston. When Brandon came to us with his plan to propose to Liz in Iceland, and subsequently sent us an amazing itinerary that he and Liz had been planning for months, it did not take any convincing at all to get us on board. A couple weeks later, we were hopping onto our red eye flight late afternoon in Boston with a couple days of clothing and a ton of gear.

We arrived in Reykjavik at 5 in the morning and beelined to Vik, where we were planning to meet Brandon and Liz the next day, only making brief stops along the way. We spent a tiny bit of extra time at Seljalandsfoss because the last time we were there, the path behind the waterfall was completely iced over (we tried… and failed… a few times). We also stopped at Skógafoss, but we didn’t stay for long in light of the huge tourist crowds. We got to Vik just in time to catch a beautiful sunset over the black sand beach. We also tried Hákarl (fermented shark)… and we probably won’t try it again.

Brandon popped the question first thing the next morning at Reynisfjara next to the basalt stacks, and after a brief greeting and meeting in person for the first time with the two of them, we were off on our Ring Road engagement adventure. Along the way, we hiked in Skaftafell, we danced by Jökulsárlón, and we stopped at as many pullouts along the highway as we could. We ran through grassy fields, stood in the middle of the road with no one in sight, and one of us even got just a teensy bit electrocuted by an electric fence greeting a pony. We almost wandered onto an F-road with our budget hatchback, we argued with sheep, and we stopped in windy places that didn’t look like the surface of our own planet just a few hours after driving away from colorful autumnal mountainsides.

A few takeaways before we let the photos speak for themselves: the Southern coast of Iceland is gorgeous, especially up to Jökulsárlón, but if you find yourself all the way out in Iceland, you are certainly missing out on an entire different world of alien landscapes. The stretch along the Eastern fjords is incredible and basically pure magic, and it’s sad to us that most tourists traveling to Iceland will remember it as nothing but a pair of big waterfalls. Also, make sure the gas tank is full as frequently as possible… there’s little to no cellular reception, and our fuel gauge beeped at us for a pretty good stretch and got down to an estimated 6km remaining before we reached Djúpivogur – certainly not the worst place to get stranded though had it come down to it. We were even able to catch the Northern lights dancing under the stars after we left our last visit to Iceland empty-handed.

Without further rambling from us, here’s our take on Liz and Brandon’s epic Ring Road engagement adventure in Iceland!!