Iceland's Geological Attractions: Ring Road Accessible

Iceland

By Joy Arden
ring road, geology, travel, accessibility

Iceland's unique geological landscape is revealed with information for travelers following the Ring Road.

The Ring Road, also known as Route 1, is Iceland’s only main road running around the entire country. It spans 828 miles around the coast and can be driven in 18 hours. The middle of Iceland is inaccessible by car due to glaciers and unique geography. By driving the Ring Road, you have access to Iceland’s main villages as well as viewing everything the country has to offer!

Within the past five years, Iceland has experienced massive growth in tourism. The most popular route in Iceland is the Golden Circle, which is a day trip where tourists can view some of Iceland’s most famous wonders. People drive in a 190 mile loop starting at the capital, Reykjavik, and stop to see a geyser, mid-Atlantic ridge, and powerful waterfall. For adventure seekers with more time, traveling the Ring Road is a good option to experience the true Icelandic culture and see incredible geological attractions. The road trip provides tourists an amazing connection with nature that is unlike any other country. The landscape changes drastically from black sand beaches to frozen glaciers to geothermal pools.

As a gift to myself, I planned a road trip around Iceland beginning the day after graduation. Most of the country is uninhabited with sparse villages along the coast. When setting up my itinerary, my hosts sent me coordinates of their location because of the lack of defined roads and addresses. Any blogs or informational sites used coordinates for places to visit as well. Frustrated with an overwhelming list of coordinates, I was inspired to make a map as a visual tool for an epic adventure!

First, I created my own database and researched points of interest. This step was intensive due to the lack of available data. I focused on waterfalls, geothermal pools, beaches, and other attractions such as rock formations or glaciers. Each point received a name, type, latitude, longitude, accessibility factor, popularity factor, link to information, and photo. The database has 172 points of interest. I added a google form to the contact portion of my website to give travelers the opportunity to build the database.

The data is represented on top of a Mapbox map, where I could style Iceland to match the theme of the website. I also imported a shapefile of Ring Road onto the map to show correlations between the data and accessibility. My final map is filtered by type of attraction, popularity, and accessibility.

Furthermore, travelers can click on each point and gather information. The pop-up includes the name, feature type, coordinates, photo, and website. Because Iceland geography is fairly unknown, travelers can use this data to enhance their experience.

I also created a leaflet map to show the journey along the Ring Road. Using Leaflet’s animation tool, I could add coordinates for the marker to follow.

The final map is posted on my website along with the leaflet map and Iceland information. This project will continue with a blog and added data from google forms.