My husband, Tom, and I recently returned from an 8-day trip in Iceland. Iceland? "Why Iceland," you may ask. Iceland first came on my radar as a potential vacation destination four years ago when we were planning our trip to England, Wales and Ireland. There are several airlines that have layovers in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, connecting the U.S. to European destinations. While it didn't work out for us to include Iceland on that trip, it remained in the back of my mind as some place that would be fun to explore. This year, we learned of some inexpensive airline tickets to Iceland, and indeed, as we considered vacation destinations in the western U.S. and Canada, we found that plane tickets to Iceland were only half the price of flying to Montana! (We discovered later that once you get there, everything is SUPER expensive. But, with a little planning you can find ways to keep your costs down.) So, without knowing a whole lot about the country, we booked a flight! Then came the research. Lots of research and planning. We had eight days to try to fit in as much of Iceland as we could, and I sure jam packed our schedule! We spent most of our time along the "Ring Road", highway 1, which circles the main part of the island -- with a couple days in the beautiful Snaefellsness Peninsula. If I can ever find the time, I hope to do a more detailed post(s) on our itinerary later, for anyone else who may be planning a trip. But, in case you need to be convinced to go there first, here are eight heavily photographed reasons that YOU should visit Iceland!