We decided to revisit Thingvellir to see how it looked with a covering of snow and also stop a few places on the way there and back to have a look around. Just outside Laugarvatn there is a picnic area which we have driven past a few times so we decided to stop here first. In one direction is a view over the lake at Laugarvatn and the other way is this view towards the national park.
A little further there is a turn off onto the original road from Thingvellir to Laugarvatn which is much more windy and heads more into the mountains to the North. The road was full of potholes and had quite a rough surface but it did mean there was plenty of grip for Vinnys' stud covered tyres. Here's a view along the towards the mountains with Vinnys' tracks through the ice filled puddle.
Here's another shot showing the cloud covering the higher parts of the mountain.
Further along we had a good view of the mountains in the national park with the yellow sun lighting up the clouds above the mountains.
Near the end of the old road it turned into a very rough track which was full of deep holes and a thick layer of snow. Poor Vinny bumped his underside on the ground a couple of times but easily managed to get us back onto the new road where we continued towards Thingvellir. When we reached the edge of the national park there was a parking place at the edge of the road where I took this photo across Thingvellir lake to the mountains in the distance.
From the same place this is the main road towards Reykjavik which is quite narrow and winding and was covered in snow and ice.
When we reached the car park we walked up the path towards to upper waterfall and passed this little patch of conifers which looked lovely with the sprinkling of snow on them.
Soon after we reached the waterfall the sun broke through the clouds to light up the waterfall and the rock face around it. Some of the water had a layer of ice on it an the rope fence next to the waterfall had a line of little icicles shining in the sun.
Here's a shot looking down the canyon with the water rushing passed the snow covered rocks.
Here's a fisheye view of the waterfall from the edge of the decking. I love the reflection of the snow and rocks in the water between us and the waterfall. The sky looked really nice and blue in this direction but there was still quite a lot of thick black cloud behind us which kept giving us snow showers as we walked about. This patch of sun went after a few minutes so I took as many shots as I could in the time it was here.
Here's a shot of the wooden decking with a fresh layer of snow on it. It looks so different to when we were here the other day.
We were going to head back towards the church to get some new shots of it with snow on and around it. On the way I stopped to take this shot across to the mountains where you can see low cloud drifting around and obscuring some of the lower hills.
As we headed towards the church some big black clouds came over and from a distance I just managed to get this shot with the orange sky behind the church before it went almost completely dark and started to snow hard.
We decided against walking all the way to the church because it looked like it was going to snow for a while so we headed back to the car park instead. We set off to go back to the apartment an we took the lakeside road which joins up with the main road towards Laugarvatn. On the way we stopped near the lake and I took a few shots including this one.
When we got back to the apartment we popped down to the Fontana Spa for a late lunch and a dip in the hot pools and steam rooms. Around the pools there was snow on the ground and the rocks so it did feel strange sitting in the hot water and it was very cold when moving from place to place. At one point it started to snow quite hard and we both had a layer of very white snow on our hair.
It snowed quite a bit all through the night and we had to set off to the airport about 8am the next day to go to the airport. It was a long dark drive in the snow and ice but we made it home safely. Over the next few days I will be processing more of my photos and will probably post some more different ones.
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