The trip has been planned for a long time, it seems. We watched videos about travel to Iceland and Norway. Joyce has been studying weather, locations, and customs. Alan developed this subdomain (with help from his new friend, Claude) to have a theme that looked more arctic than Mediterranean or European.

We put our checklist into an app on our phones, which is a list we’ve developed over several trips. It’s a big help for our aging memories and certainly makes the days before departure a lot less dramatic!

The flight plan: Indianapolis → JFK → overnight to Keflavík. The route changed several times since our original booking. We think this might be our first time at JFK.

We must be getting good at this packing for an oversees trip stuff. This one was a little more challenging as we are packing for windy, rainy, even snowy locations when the temperature at home is in the 80’s. We read about what would be needed and started purchasing what we needed early. Early in the week we took our suitcases to the guest room and started gathering items as we thought of them. The final packing today went pretty smoothly. Both suitcases were under the 50 lb. limit!

We heard we should dress in layers from many sources. We have winter coats, waterproof jackets, boots and pants, fleece layers, long sleeve and short sleeve shirts, swimwear and even a pair of shorts. We will report later on what we actually used!

The last look at home found Gus in the living room playing with some of the newer toys Joyce has withheld for a few months, as he had been ejected from the sunroom, his favorite spot. Annie was snoozing in the office in a spot near the window we created with a comfy snug sack.