Hi Moose, this thread started last year!

The main lesson from this thread must be that yes the ferry is expensive, but the answer is to go for the whole summer and explore properly, not squeeze the whole thing into a couple of weeks :)

We ended up changing our return ferry to the last one of the year (which made getting to the ferry tricky with so much ice on all the roads), and was there for nearly 3 months. We need to go back for at least the same amount of time again. A Jeep with German plates came off the ferry that we left on, he planned to camp in his Jeep all the time for a whole year!!

We also bought the camping card, but there are not that many campsites in the scheme compared to how many sites there are, so we often found ourselves wanting to stay at a site outside the scheme. Many in the scheme are only open in August too. Outside of August many have water turned off, external plumbing removed, no facilities and may be locked. Some campsites stay open until mid Sept, a few until the end, and in theory as far as I can find out, there are only two open all year. One of those is the out of town half of the Akureyri campsite, and the owner says you need to book once its out of season.

:)