May gave me a little bit of time off from work due to low flows on the Owyhee River as well as rehab time for my dislocated shoulder on the Illinois River earlier in the month. I decided to take this extra time and venture down south for a sightseeing/photography tour of Northern California. Previously I ventured around the Trinity Alps area to paddle on the Cal Salmon and hike the Four Lakes Loop, but that was the extent of my California knowledge.

Once a little-known island situated between Greenland and Europe, Iceland has rapidly become a popular travel destination. In 2000 around 300,000 people visited in Iceland. That more than tripled to nearly 1 million visitors in 2014, and in 2016 almost 1.8 million people visited the island with a population of only 334,000. It’s hard to pinpoint where this sudden surge of interest came from, but some experts point to the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, which affected air travel across Europe in 2010 and may have put Iceland on people’s travel radar.

So tourism is booming in Iceland. Should you visit? Having visited Iceland in October 2017, I can say that the hype is real. The land of fire and ice is a unique travel destination with landscapes that can only be described as otherworldly. So yes, you should visit. I’d say do it sooner than later since tourism continues to skyrocket, and this will inevitably take a toll on the wild landscapes that draw people to Iceland.