This morning Pokin actually read up on the Aurora Borealis in Iceland.

Turns out, while September and March are supposed to be the best times to see them in Iceland (September due to the Autumnal Equinox), Iceland isn’t actually the best place to see them in general. (Alert: because it’s often cloudy and rainy!!!) If aurora is your main purpose then you’re better off heading to places like Finland, Sweden, and Alaska. You can definitely see them in Iceland, and many people have taken great photos, but it is very much up to luck and timing. There are forecast apps and forecast sites that tell you the chances of seeing aurora, though apparently for Iceland they are not too reliable. Your best bet is to check out the live cams or follow one of the many Facebook groups that share sightings.

Well we were here supposedly to see the still resting Fagradalsfjall volcano, so I guess not seeing aurora is ok. From here on out the forecast doesn’t look great for aurora sightings.

Given it was raining this morning and given we were up a lot of the night waiting for the aurora to reappear, we decided to make it a rest day and take it easy.

Which lasted until about 11am.

“It’s nice out,” Nicholas said. “We should probably taken advantage.”

So again we bundled up and headed out. We considered a few options that we couldn’t do because of the rain yesterday, and in the ended decided to head back to Skógafoss.

Skógafoss also happened to be the starting point of the Fimmvörðuháls trailhead, apparently one of the top hikes in Iceland because you’re walking alongside a river dotted with waterfalls for the initial stretch. The whole trail is a 25km (16 mile) hike one way that ends in Þörsmock (Thórsmörk). Given that we were starting out at 11am and needed to drive 25 minutes to get to the starting point, we definitely weren’t doing the full hike, but we figured we’d get as far as we possibly could before turning around.

Back to the crowded parking lot and back up many flights of stairs we went.

My bud decided to film it on his GoPro.

Which was just like 10 minutes of walking up stairs. Longer for Pokin.

It didn’t take much going on the trail to lose most people. We didn’t lose the sheep though, which I didn’t mind. Sheep are fun.

We spent about 2 hours walking the trail.

Eventually we got to High Peak Falls, and decided we’d better turn around. Pokin had sunset plans and didn’t want to miss them.