By the fifth day of our Ring Road adventure in Iceland, we were starting to run out of clean clothes. We had known well before our trip that doing laundry on the Ring Road might be a challenge due to the lack of laundry machines at most campgrounds.

On the morning of our fifth day, we were in luck when we Googled whether there was a place to do laundry in the town we were currently in, Höfn, and just happened to find a commercial laundry service (that seemed to do towels and other items in large quantities for hotels) and two recent reviews claimed that that the place was willing to do a few loads of personal laundry. We didn’t even care what the price was for this service! We were so thrilled that we not only found a laundry place, but we could go off and have fun while someone else washed and dried our laundry. Priceless!

As if we weren’t thrilled enough about the laundry service, it turned out there were some natural hot tubs not far away that we could visit for a couple of hours while our laundry was being taken care of. Could there have been any more of a perfect combo?! We had to pass up some natural hot springs on the second day of our Ring Road trip due to car troubles, so we were beyond excited about these beautiful and relaxing hot tubs.

Furthermore, since we visited early in the morning, there were only two other couples that showed up. We were very relieved to have a hot tub all to ourselves (especially during pandemic times). Apparently this place can get a bit crowded at night!

After picking up our laundry a few hours later, we hit the road for a long journey up to the northeast region of Iceland. We had originally identified Vestrahorn Mountain as an attraction nearby to visit and it was partly the reason we stayed a repeat night at the campground in Höfn, but with the cloudy morning weather, this attraction was going to be somewhat pointless to visit, as the mountain would have been hidden in the clouds.

Our next intended destination was four hours away and the only stops we made along the way were unplanned ones we saw right off the road, including a beach with a cool view and a teal blue waterfall.

We lost Wifi service for much of east portion of the Ring Road and I didn’t find it particularly exciting, so I’m glad we had chosen to stay at the last major town of Höfn the night before because I don’t think we would have found anything else good past it for quite a distance if had chosen to keep driving late in the day.

The town of Seyðisfjörður was our next planned stop and for one silly reason, a famous and picturesque rainbow road. We knew this was going to be a quick, see-and-go touristy attraction that might not be worth the extra hour driving out of the way to get there, but we took our chances. Thank goodness the winding road there ended up being especially scenic and refreshingly so after experiencing the rest of the underwhelming east portion of the Ring Road.

The last thing on our agenda for the day was to see if there were any puffins left at a popular viewing spot by a harbor in the northeast region called Borgarfjarðarhöfn. This town also had a decent campground we could settle into for the night, so even if we didn’t see puffins, it wouldn’t be a waste.

It was August 20th by the time we reached this portion of our Ring Road journey and puffins in Iceland start leaving land by mid- to late-August, so we knew our chances of seeing puffins would likely be slim and we were right.

At sunset, we patiently waited at the viewing post near the harbor for nearly 45 minutes while enjoying some happy hour beverages before finally giving up. We did see a couple of puffins quickly fly in and out of their little burrowed homes on the sides of the grassy cliff, but none stuck around long enough for a decent photo. We decided we would try again in the morning!

Our campground that night at Borgarfjörður Eystri was serene, spacious, and had a beautiful rock formation that was said to be home to a very large population of elves. We camped right by that rock formation and we can neither deny or confirm the presence of Icelandic elves.

Stay tuned for the next day when we visit a canyon like no other, with unique basalt columns and a teal blue riving running through it!