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Iowa traveler makes woolly encounter on Iceland's Ring Road

September 9, 2016 at 5:52PM

please write my name as “Shari Brandli” (note that my last name has an “L” between the “D” and the “I”--that gets missed frequently). I live in Mason City, IA, but I’m (proudly) from Warroad, MN. I took this photo using nothing more than my Samsung Galaxy 5 smartphone camera--and apparently my ability to “baa” in Icelandic! I love the combination of the landscape’s desolate beauty and the whimsical curiosity of the sheep--especially the fact that two of them are staring directly at me (the other twin lamb’s feet are just visible underneath the ewe’s belly). I spent five days driving the Ring Road by myself, and I really enjoyed the freedom to explore whatever I felt like seeing each day. I had purchased a guide book (Lonely Planet) and made notes about interesting sites and sights between each day’s starting and ending points, so I had a rough idea of what I wanted to visit--but I had a lot of flexibility as well. There were a couple of days where I lost count of the number of waterfalls I had seen--at least two dozen. The Icelandic landscape is otherworldly--glaciers, ice caps, bright green moss, brown lunar wastelands, black volcanic beaches, crystal clear rivers, tidy towns clinging to the edges of fiords. I’ve been to 30 countries, and Iceland is easily in the Top 5. It’s closer than people realize too because Delta flies what amounts to a non-stop red eye that leaves Minneapolis around 10pm and arrives in Keflavik the next morning. By the way, if you’re interested in seeing other international travel photos I’ve taken, please let me know. I’m more than happy to comb through my best ones and send some your way for potential publication. I hope this gives you the information you need, but please let me know if you need anything else. Please let me know when it will be published. My parents have been Trib subscribers for decades, and I know they’d love to see the photo in print. Thanks again! viewfinders2016 (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

The Traveler: Shari Brandli of Mason City, Iowa.

The scene: Sheep eyed the photographer, a native of Warroad, Minn., near Iceland's 830-mile Ring Road. "I love the combination of the landscape's desolate beauty and the whimsical curiosity of the sheep, especially the fact that two of them are staring directly at me," Brandli wrote in an e-mail.

The trip: Brandli spent five days driving around the island nation on the road. "I really enjoyed the freedom to explore whatever I felt like seeing each day," she wrote. "I had purchased a guide book (Lonely Planet) and made notes about interesting sites and sights between each day's starting and ending points, so I had a rough idea of what I wanted to visit, but I had a lot of flexibility as well."

on Iceland: "There were a couple of days where I lost count of the number of waterfalls I had seen — at least two dozen. The Icelandic landscape is otherworldly: glaciers, ice caps, bright green moss, brown lunar wastelands, black volcanic beaches, crystal clear rivers, tidy towns clinging to the edges of fjords. I've been to 30 countries, and Iceland is easily in the top five. It's closer than people realize, too," she wrote.

The equipment: "I took this photo using nothing more than my Samsung Galaxy 5 smartphone camera — and apparently my ability to 'baa' in Icelandic!"

Share your photos: To submit your travel photo for consideration to Viewfinders, share it on Instagram tagged with #STtravel, or e-mail a jpeg to viewfinders@startribune.com.