He told us about how he plays drums and rhythm guitar, but couldn’t sing a lick. We sat with the bartender, asking the usual traveler questions. (Icelanders, as it happens, are very proud of their hot dogs.) I agreed as my wife returned. The bartender said the place hosts bands every week in the summer, and asked if I wanted to try one of his vegan hot dogs. There were a dozen small tables in the barn, and a stage littered with instruments. My wife excused herself while I made small talk. He was in his 30s, tattooed around the neck and arms, doing the sorts of things bartenders do while the place is empty: cleaning glasses, wiping down the bar. Within: either relief or guaranteed murder.Īs our eyes adjusted to the light, we found a single bearded man, standing at a makeshift bar, in a barn that had clearly been converted into a music venue. No other traffic, no other people, and certainly no Music. Just the whistle of the wind rushing across the cliffside. We parked in front of the barn and got out. We took it slow over the unpaved driveway, our shitty rental struggling to maintain traction as gravel shot upward and outward. Surely, where there’s Music, there’s also a bathroom.Ī mysterious white barn at the end of a long dirt road in Iceland. At the entrance to the driveway, there was a single small sign. But then we spotted a long driveway leading to a dusty barn nestled in the foothills of some igneous palisades. With no gas stations or restaurants for miles, we were stumped. We agreed to keep the stops minimal during that span, but about halfway through, we needed a bathroom break. We couldn’t find anywhere to stay between the two towns, so we decided to push through that stretch of road, even though it was getting to be late in the day. One of the longer single drives was between the small towns of Vik and Höfn, at just over three hours. Yet I’d be proven wrong, time and time again, another mile down the road.Īt a certain point, it became clear that we’d have to be judicious in our detours, as we were on a timeline and 800 miles is a long way to go. I remember feeling a constant desire to pull off to the side of the road whenever we went around a bend, sure that the magnificent view before us could never be bested. Its landscapes, “recently” crafted by volcanic outpourings, vary from sloping green valleys to surfaces so convincingly lunar that the astronauts originally trained there before the Apollo moon landings. Iceland, as you’re probably aware, is stunningly gorgeous. Each day we’d finish off another chunk of the road in our rented compact car, spending the night in a different travelers’ hotel or Airbnb. Our plan was to drive the Ring Road, an 800-mile loop that circles the island nation. When I think of Kentucky Route Zero, I think back to an unexpected barn.īack in 2016, my wife and I traveled around Iceland for our honeymoon.
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