We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the van and where we stayed, so I suppose I’ll start there. The gist is that we rented a van about the size of a standard mini. Happy Campers, the company who rents them, converted it to include a small fridge, a gas burner, a bed-couch, and other basic amenities.
Frasier the Van
The questions we get asked most often are:
- Was sleeping incredibly tight? Yes
- Are you still married? Yes, barely
- How were the bathrooms? Generally pretty clean, with showers and laundry (sometimes)
- Do you wish you had gotten a larger van? Yes, though I think the economy of space added to the adventure in a good way.
- What was it like sleeping without night? It’s… fine. Not horrible, but I still prefer some darkness.
- Which van did you rent? This little scamp found here.
The biggest challenge was learning how to convert between driving, cooking, and sleeping. By the third day we had worked out a pretty good system that involved moving all the bedding to the front seat to get access to food and kitchen. Then, once it was time to sleep, we learned where to leave shoes, water, and other nighttime essentials as to not fumble through the dark.
Pro Tip: If you find yourself camping in a tiny van, designate one place to put each thing and only ever set it down in that spot. These vans are Bermuda Triangles on wheels and if you start setting things down wherever, you’re going to spend a LOT of time wondering where you put your phone charger then wondering whether you bought a phone charger and ultimately buying a new phone charger.
The Campsites
Sprinkled throughout Iceland are campgrounds which allow you to park for the night. Generally they don’t require pre-registration so you can just show up then either book through an app when you arrive or just find a friendly ranger wandering around taking payment. Some even seemed to operate largely on the honors system.
Some of the campsites (as well at the rental place) had left over food, spices, and cooking stuff left from other campers. I love when people pay stuff forward – super cool vibe.
Each campsite was unique in setting and amenities, but generally speaking they all served roughly the same purpose; a place to park for the night, bathrooms, water and a place to wash dishes. Things that varied were the vistas, whether they had showers, whether you had to pay for hot water in the showers, and cost (though most were between $25-40/night for the both of us). We didn’t really see any that had clearly marked sites, you just sorta pull up and park where you can. Basically, if I fits I sits – but for vans.
Here are some photos of the campsites, in no particular order. Yes, on night we camped in the glade from The Maze Runner. A lot of good men died out there but we escaped.
And just in case you were wondering… Sarah named our nav-system Nigel (because the default voice was British) which for a hot minute I mistakenly attributed to Niles Crane, from the TV show Frasier – which is why we ended up calling the van Frasier. We realized this error pretty quickly but by then it was too late. We didn’t want to confuse him by changing his name mid-trip.
Oh and one last tidbit: since the Happy Camper vans are all so brightly colored they really stand out when you’re driving around the island. Approaching fellow Happy Campers were always happy to wave excitedly when passing us on the road, which we gladly returned. Nothing like an ad-hoc kinship to make you feel at home in a faraway land.
👆This is us returning the van on the final day looking far more rested than we were. RIP vacation beard.
