The Traveling Three go to Iceland

A real, imperfect, completely honest guide to Iceland with kids from two average forty-somethings and one very enthusiastic eight-year-old.

If you've been researching Iceland with kids and you keep landing on polished travel blogs written by people who seem like they also run triathlons in their spare time... this one's for you. We are not those people. We are two average Americans in our forties, currently more out of shape than we'd like to admit, who decided to pack our eight-year-old daughter into a camper van and spend four days driving the southern coast of Iceland. We survived. We thrived, actually. And we came home different in ways that are hard to explain but I'm going to try.

This is the post I wish I'd found before we left. 

Flying out of Dulles International in Northern Virginia the flight itself isn't bad.  We flew on Iceland Air (we fly Iceland Air a lot actually).  Food is decent and the trip is only about 6 hours long. 

But flying isn't always easy, no matter how smooth the process is.  International flights east to west tend to leave after everyone's bedtime. This one did. I am not someone who sleeps on planes - never have been, probably never will be - so I arrived in Iceland running on stubbornness and whatever passes for enthusiasm at that hour. We land in the morning there, which means you have a choice: fight exhaustion or use it.

My husband has a gift I do not possess, which is the ability to embrace difficult situations and keep moving anyway. He drove us out of the airport and straight into our first day. If it had been me driving, I would have needed a full night's sleep first. Know your limits, know your partnership, plan accordingly, add an extra day in for rest when you need it - ours is always at the end.

We booked through Happy Campers and I cannot recommend them enough. The whole process was almost suspiciously easy. Airport pickup, van walkthrough, choose your extras (camping chairs, coffee press, blankets, flashlights - all available a la carte), load up, and go. On the way back you clean out the van, return your extras, and they shuttle you wherever you need to be nearby, usually the airport but we stayed our last night in an AIRBNB in the city. That's it. That's the whole thing.

We got the Happy Camper 3, which technically sleeps five - two adults and a little in the bottom bunk, and two fairly small kids in the top bunk - though three would probably fit if they are small (toddler) and used to be close to one another.

In drive mode it seats five with seatbelts, and one of the best decisions we made was keeping our daughter up front with us between the two seats. She had a booster seat there and honestly it changed the drive. We got to experience the whole landscape together instead of being separated by a wall of kitchen equipment. The separation between front cab and the back is definitely defined - the cooktop, sink, and pantry section completely cuts off the front cab from the back. You cannot reach a snack, a child, or anything else through it. So if you have a kid who needs you accessible while driving, think through the front seat option where a booster or slim carseat will fit between passenger and driver nicely.

We got the Extra Love version of the van, which costs noticeably less than the newer models and had a couple of small quirks - a slider door that decided not to work for a day before mysteriously fixing itself, a few character dings from previous adventures. We had zero real issues. Honestly the personality of a well-traveled van felt right for this trip.

TIP: Get the extra insurance. All of it. Including the wind gust coverage that protects you if a door gets caught and bends backward. The wind in Iceland is not theoretical. There are cameras everywhere on the roads - don't speed, the tickets follow you home and come out of your deposit weeks later.

Campgrounds in Iceland are everywhere. They are genuinely like rest stops, sitting right off the main road, easy to pull into, easy to leave. Not all are open year-round, so check before you go, but in June we never had trouble finding a spot. We stayed at two - one in Vik and one in Selfoss - and both were around $60 a night for the three of us.

No black or grey water hookups at our sites, but there was always a designated area to empty and clean the tanks, plus fresh water access. Coming from someone who is particular about water, the taste was actually refreshingly good. The exception was Keflavik near the airport, which had that city water smell. Electricity hookups were available for an extra charge, though our van's second battery charged while we drove and handled the lights, cooler, and the small heater we barely needed.

The showers were there - some free, some coin-operated. The bathrooms were consistently clean, which I was quietly relieved about every single time.

The thing that surprised us most was the community kitchen. Every campground had one - a covered cafeteria-style space with multiple cooktops, sinks, boiling kettles, long tables. Bring your own gear, cook dinner, clean up before you leave. Staff maintained them. We didn't end up using ours because we were only there four days and were so exhausted each night that cooking felt ambitious, but on a longer trip? That kitchen would've become a ritual.

The Vik campground had something else entirely. No designated spots - you just find your place. We tucked ourselves up against a hill blanketed in Alaskan lupines, purple and wild and everywhere. They're not native. Turns out they were introduced to enrich the volcanic soil, which doesn't naturally hold many nutrients for other plants to grow. So Iceland is slowly turning purple a beautiful way.

We had heard the classic advice - once you leave the airport, the cost of living drops significantly. We want to gently but firmly tell you: that is not accurate, and we were relatively shocked.

Our taxi from the Airbnb to the airport was $40 for a ten-minute ride. Our first meal off the plane - three lunch plates, nothing to drink but water - was over $100 at a hotel restaurant. Our grocery run, which felt modest, came to over $150 and included blueberries at $10 a pint, some deli meat and cheese, tortillas, a pack of hot dogs, coffee, a few condiments, skyr, and granola. We were so caught off guard that we actually looked up Iceland's national cost of living and average income over dinner one night. Turns out Icelanders earn higher wages and have heavily subsidized healthcare, childcare, education, and mandatory retirement savings - but the raw cost of living is seemingly high for them too. It just lands differently when your whole system is built around it.

We adjusted. By the end of the trip we'd figured out we didn't need nearly as much food stock as we thought, especially when we were busy from early morning until we fell into bed at night. Snacks were queen. Road snacks in that cooler kept us going between adventures and dramatically cut what we spent eating out.

TIP: Don't overbuy groceries. Plan and use as you go.  Happy Campers keeps a shelf of items left behind by previous campers - shampoo, coffee creamer, small extras. Do a scan before you head out. And don't assume you'll have the fridge space or the time/energy to eat your take away left overs after every restaurant meal. 

We went the second week of June. Locals told us that was a sweet spot - before the peak summer crowds, great weather, long days. They were right. We had two of the warmest days expected all summer, with highs around 60 degrees Fahrenheit and lows in the mid-40s. We also got incredibly lucky with sunshine in a country that locals say sees maybe two weeks of 60* F. sun a year.

The temperature in Iceland doesn't swing wildly throughout the year - it's more temperate than you'd expect. What changes is light. Summer is nearly 24 hours of daylight (bring an eye mask, this is not optional). Winter brings darkness and snowfall but the cold itself isn't as extreme as people imagine. Spring and fall sit somewhere in between. The wind, though - the wind is always part of the equation. It can take doors off vehicles in high gusts. It will make a wet person feel abhorrently miserable.

So the goal is: stay dry. Here's what we each brought and how it actually worked out.

Two fleece layers each, worn between base layers and the outer shell. Wind and waterproof jackets and pants - ours were Columbia brand, Hiking shoes (Merrell), easy walking shoes, and flip flops for the shower. I forgot hats and gloves and we were fine in June, but I'd bring them for spring or fall travel. Our daughter wore through both pairs of her hiking shoes - we put the wet pair in the window each night to dry on the defroster. Bring a backup pair for kids especially

TIP: The wet and wind layer is the most important thing in your bag. If you stay dry, you stay warm. Columbia outlet in Leesburg has great options if you're coming from Northern Virginia.

Because we only had four full adventure days, we stayed on the southern coast, driving as far as Vik - about five hours from the airport. We could have spent three days in Vik alone and not run out of things to do. The town is classy and cool in a way that settles into you slowly.

On one single day we walked on a glacier, went into ice caves, watched a live lava demonstration, learned more about volcanoes than I expected to absorb, and sat on a black sand beach running from waves that had no interest in being friendly while puffins flew in overhead to settle for the night. If you know me at all you already know the beach was my favorite. But all of these adventures were new to us.  I think the entire trip will be a core memory.

We stopped at two waterfalls. The first you can actually walk behind - bring your wet weather gear for this and you will not regret it, bring nothing and you will be soaked and cold and watching from the sideline while everyone else is inside the waterfall. The second was larger, louder, more powerful - you couldn't walk behind it but you could stand close enough to feel it in your chest, and there were 500+ steps up to an overlook at the top. Not ADA accessible (just assume all the side quests aren't), very worth it if you're able.

Then there was the hot spring river hike. My daughter had one non-negotiable request for this trip. One. The reviews said easy, 40 minutes, running hot spring river. Done. We were going.

We pulled into the trailhead and looked up. Straight up. What we thought was the hike was a hill that was lying about being a hill - it was a small mountain with a zig-zag line of people working their way up the face of it. We could see what looked like a hot spring plume near the top and thought okay, one hour, we get there, we soak, we come back down. Fine.

The trail had other plans.

It took us up and over the mountain entirely. Behind it, actually - to the other side, where a massive waterfall gorge opened up below us that we did not see coming and could not have prepared ourselves to see. Past a herd of wild sheep who had absolutely no interest in us. Down the other side into a saddle between two hills, then up again. About a thousand feet of total elevation change. An hour and a half in, we finally arrived at the hot spring river.

My daughter got in like it was a bubble bath she had been promised her entire life. She relished in it. She was a completely different creature in that water than she had been on the trail - where, to her credit, she had been bouncing around like a mountain goat the entire way up while two underprepared adults in their forties trudged behind her with increasingly creative complaints and a shared 'are we ever going to get there' energy that we tried to keep below the audible threshold.

We had exactly 30 minutes in the water before we had to turn around to get the van back on time and make our shuttle to the Airbnb. All three of us were quietly devastated. Muscles soothed, spirits slightly broken by the math of it, we made our way back down in a kind of moody, tired silence that is its own kind of family bonding.

The way there was all anticipation - every turn felt like it might reveal the springs just around the next bend, and it never did, and our daughter's enthusiasm carried us further than our own bodies wanted to go. The way back was just the mountain, again, the shakiness of our legs, and the thought of just the few minutes we had spent in that luxurious river.

Would we have done the hike if we'd known what it actually was? Honestly, probably not. Standing at the trailhead looking up at what we thought was the full climb was intimidating enough. The real version would have sent us back to the van for snacks and a rethink. So am I glad we didn't know? Yeah. We unknowingly climbed a small mountain. The three of us. Together. And that is an unexpected win we've collected for our memory bank.

Next time we go - and there will be a next time - we're dedicating a full day to it. More water, more snacks, a pace that lets you stop and look around instead of just survive the incline. And we're staying in that hot spring until our muscles are mush and someone has to physically make us leave.

TIP: If you're planning this trek to the hot spring river: ignore any review that calls it easy or short. Budget most of the day, bring more water than you think you need, pack real snacks, and wear your hiking shoes not your hey dudes. You will not regret going. You will regret being underprepared.

I talk about Scotland sometimes - the way everything there glows in warm contrast against saturated deep green. Iceland is the opposite. There's a constant atmospheric haze that diffuses the nearly 24-hour summer light into something bright and almost blinding no matter where the sun sits in the sky. High highlights, deep shadows. The contrast is dramatic. Bring sunglasses. Bring sunscreen. The sun is more present than you think even when you can't locate it directly.

We already knew we liked traveling. This trip told us something else - that we're adaptable. That camping as a three-person family is actually doable and enjoyable. That we prefer to cover ground rather than plant ourselves in one place. We're already talking about a smaller van in Scotland next time.

But the bigger thing, the thing I keep coming back to, was something that happened with our daughter.

Europe doesn't have the same relationship to safety railings and warning signs that we do in the US. You'll find paths to cliff edges with no barriers, overlooks with worn footpaths and no net underneath. When I showed my daughter which paths felt reasonable and which felt riskier in the wind, she started spiraling. The 'what ifs.' You know the ones.

I've started reframing "what ifs" as "what is the plan if...": if this happened, what would be our plan? Not because there's actually time to execute a plan in a slip-and-fall situation - there isn't, and she and I both know that. But because moving her brain from panic into planning pulls her out of the spiral and into something she can hold. We practiced the same thing when the Airbnb check-in had a mix-up and we were temporarily without our apartment. What would be the plan if this doesn't work out? We made the plan. The anxiety settled. The problem resolved itself before we even needed the plan.

I didn't expect Iceland to hand us a new tool for managing anxiety. And yet.

For connectivity: my husband used his Verizon travel pass, which offers 12 days of international data per year and worked reliably throughout the trip - better than WiFi in some spots, honestly. I kept my phone tucked away the whole time. We were always together, I didn't need to reach him, and I have a tendency to forget about my phone when I'm somewhere worth paying attention to. The van came with a WiFi puck, but it was a Huawei brand and because of security concerns we chose not to use it.

NOTE: Gas stations in Iceland may require you to use their membership tag (it comes on your key ring from the rental) before you pay at the pump. We filled up once for the four days - the tank is large and cost us just over $100. Parking at the tourist sites runs about $10 per visit depending on vehicle size.

The Airbnb we stayed in for our last night was the Castle Inn in Keflavik - clean, well-maintained, late checkout was a gift. There was a mix-up at check-in that got resolved quickly and easily. We were grateful for a real bed.

June is a beautiful time to go. Second week specifically was the local recommendation - pre-crowd, great weather, that perfect stretch of long days. Locals also unanimously agreed that the camper van is the way to see Iceland. A taxi driver told us he started a camping club in the 1980s with 30 cars. Today it has over 700 members and does at least one trip a year. When the people who live there choose to experience their own country this way, that tells you something.

I never felt unsafe or unsure once.  We teach our daughter about those spidey senses - mine area always ready when traveling (or even every day quite honestly) but they never alarmed once.  

Iceland with kids is extremely manageable, even for people like us who are not particularly outdoorsy by American standards and haven't recently set any fitness records. What it asks of you is flexibility, a rain layer, and a willingness to let things go differently than you planned. In exchange it gives you puffins on a black sand beach at the end of a day you could not have invented.

That feels like a fair trade to me.

More from The Traveling Three coming soon.  We're always on the go.  

Want to see the photos from this trip, or others? Follow along on Instagram - and if you're a Northern Virginia family thinking about getting your own story told, you know where to find me.

Searching for the good stuff. Finding it every time.

- Sam Schinsky of s a schinsky photography, Virginia USA