Ride to Varmaland
Today’s ride started with a sustained climb into dense fog. The traffic was light and mostly moved over when they saw our flashers. The climb was such a grade that we could churn along slowly without pushing our legs to their limits. After reaching the summit it was pretty much downhill to our campground. Today’s ride was just under 50 miles. Our mileage these last few days will be lower, as we are close to Reykjavik now and no longer have to bank miles. Instead we are planning a slight detour into Reykjavik that takes us east and avoids the section with a tunnel that was going to require us to put our bike on a bus. (Bikes are not allowed in that tunnel.) The campground we are in is really unique. It used to house some small university, but now has a cucumber farm and a grade school. And it has a swimming pool, of course. We made it here before 4 and soaked for a little more than an hour. Every campsite needs a swimming pool…. Today Mr. Frugality had to face an uncomfortable fact. In the airport a kind tourist recommended that we buy a camping card – something that lets you camp for free at campgrounds in Iceland. For $200 we only needed to use it 8-10 times for it to pay off. Easy! We bought one the first night but then discovered that it is only accepted at a subset of the campgrounds here. Tonight we will use it for our third and last time. I think it could work out better for people in cars. There were several times that we were within 25 miles of a campground that would accept it – but on our bike, that usually was too much out of our way. Note from Natalie: After a very foggy, misty beginning, the day became beautiful and sunny as we descended into a green valley north of Reykjavik. The campground has filled up as usual. Vertical feet gained today – close to 1500. Much nicer than a close-to-4000 day! 
