Dear Iceland

Thank you.
Thank you for your warm people in a place that seems it should be cold and unwelcoming. For people that welcome strangers into their home for traditional breakfasts filled with cheese on rye and the delirious laughter that comes from overnight flights and lifer reunions. For restaurant owners who shout "Please, sit!" when what you came in for at lunch isn't being served until dinner, because they will make it anyway. For a place to hang my hat and recharge.

Thank you for no guardrails. For having stunning waterfalls around every corner. And for beauty off-the-beaten-path - because you can only take so much of the bus loads of tourists pouring over the 'famous' waterfalls, with go-pro's and selfie-sticks and iPhones (oh, my!), before you need to walk across some fields filled with the friendliest ponies, through a canyon, and wind up at an isolated and pristine cascade of the cleanest water you've ever seen. And you'll wonder if you're still on earth, or if you just walked into the freaking afterlife via pony trail. Like Narnia, but better. (And thank you for 5 straight day's of sunshine, so I could have double and triple rainbows painted on every waterfall I saw).

Thank you for keeping it real with your active and plentiful volcanoes, your shifting continental plates, and your Geo-thermal boiling hot ground, erupting through geysers and bubbling into warm pools for me to float around in.

Thanks for your endless views down every road. For making every trip in the car a destination in itself and making every trip out of the house an adventure. For the jolly ponies just waiting to be snuggled, and the not so jolly sheep (no snuggling with those fools).

Thank you for clean water, and clean air. For beaches of black sand and lava rock. And crisp mornings with birdsong, and cold nights with endless sunsets that fade into breathtaking shows of the aurora that transcend time and space.

Thank you for exceeding all of my expectations, and being your solitary and wonderful self.