“I am in Iceland this week so am on odd hours.”
I wrote that while answering a work email from the trip. Somebody needed a reference call. I said I would find the email, coordinate it, and start another thread so we could catch up when I was back in New York.
The rest of the trip was also happening through email.
I did not build one clean itinerary. I booked each night and sent the driving routes to myself. The stops were Reykjavik, Selfoss, Kirkjubæjarklaustur, and Úthlíð. It was a different place to sleep almost every night.
The first night was a private room in Reykjavik. Then came a house near Selfoss, a cottage near Kirkjubæjarklaustur, and a panorama cottage in Úthlíð. I was moving across the south instead of staying in Reykjavik and driving out and back every day.
The Selfoss house had a problem before I arrived. The host offered a bigger place next door with a full kitchen. The two houses were side by side, so the directions stayed the same even if the door changed.
Later that night, I started sending Google Maps routes to my own inbox.
The subject lines were almost the itinerary by themselves. They had the place I was leaving, the next bed, and every stop I had added in between.
The first went from the Northern Lights cabin toward Kirkjubæjarklaustur. I put Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss in the route, plus two other stops. Four minutes later, I sent myself another version with three other stops instead.
Six minutes after that, I mapped the following day.
That route went from the hotel near Kirkjubæjarklaustur back toward Úthlíð, but it did not go straight there. I added Skaftafell in Vatnajökull National Park and Jökulsárlón, the glacier lagoon beside the Ring Road.
It was a lot of driving for a short trip. It also meant the days were not built around one town or one hotel. The reservation told me where I needed to end up. The map held everything I wanted to see before I got there.
The first long route moved east along the South Coast. The next one kept going to the glacier lagoon before turning back west for the last night. The route was in my inbox, one version after another.
The route changed while I was working on it. Two extra stops became three. The next day picked up a national park and a glacier lagoon. I kept sending each version to myself so the latest one would be on my phone.
The final reservation was a panorama cottage in Úthlíð. The message for that one mentioned a hot tub. That was the end point after the long drive west.
I still had the reference call to coordinate from Iceland. I had waterfalls, a national park, a glacier lagoon, and another bed each night. Odd hours was about right.