First stop, Iceland

It has been a whirlwind since we committed to taking a trip this fall. We are not a well travelled family and have a lot of things to figure out. After we got the passport process started in case we would need them, we began to focus on the larger questions of:

• What we are going to need for the trip?
• How much might this trip cost?

and the big elephant in the room

• Where in the world are we going to go?

Over the many months of thinking about this trip before we committed to it, two main options were in our minds.

The first option was a North American trip. There is lots of great things to see here in the US and traveling in our own country would be cheaper and easier for us in so many ways. This would be much lower stress and allow us to get to see some of the things we have talked of wanting to see.

The second option was a European trip. This would really get us out of our comfort zone, but give us a taste of many different cultures and allow us to see up close an older history than we have here in the US. The extra costs, the language barrier, and many unknowns made this a scarier, riskier choice, but we knew it offered a world we had hardly ever even dreamed of seeing with our own eyes and an incredible experience for our children.

After wrestling with it for a while, we decided to start toward Europe as we might never get another chance to do something like this. We can, of course, come back to North America early and travel here if we want to, but taking the leap to start toward Europe will likely keep us there as long as we can stay.

Once that was decided, we needed to pick a starting point. We looked at a few options, but Iceland was recommended and once we started looking at pictures, we knew this was a place we all wanted to go.

As it seems easy to stop there on our way to or from the rest of Europe, we are starting there. I've had it in my head that I want to hit the northern most points first and work south to avoid as much cold weather as possible. From a temperature perspective, it is better to hit Iceland in September over later in the year. (Average high in September is 48°F.)

So, we have one way tickets to Iceland for early September. The rest all needs to be worked out now. Where we will stay, how we will get around, what we will see, when will we leave and where to next. At this point though, I'm just excited that we've got our first point on the map.