Sláinte!

It’s not often that I get to have two travel adventures in one summer, but 2019 is apparently the year!  My research took me to Reykjavik and then to Dublin in these past two weeks, but since I’d gone all the way to Ireland, I thought, why not tack on a holiday at the end?

I studied abroad in Dublin almost sixteen years ago, funnily enough at Trinity College, which owns the manuscript I came to consult last week.

The Long Room at TCD, which is not where you work with manuscripts from the library, but which you do have to pass through to get to them

I thought I knew Dublin pretty well, but as it turns out, I knew the route from my flat to my classes, and I knew where the River Liffey was.  Apparently I didn’t get out much as an undergrad.  So this time I behaved like a proper tourist and…spent most of my time on Grafton Street.  But that’s only because I could get a sandwich at Marks and Spencer and eat it in their café when it was raining!

Grafton Street, home of expensive clothing and cheap sandwiches

My good friend, Mr. Wilde

Samuel Beckett Bridge, designed to look like Ireland's national symbol, the harp

Art market outside St. Stephen's Green

Large, slightly scary squirrel

On impulse, I joined a tour to Belfast and the Giant’s Causeway my last day in Dublin.  I’d been to Belfast before, and in fact I’d been on the same Black Cab tour of the city, but I don’t remember the experience of hearing the history of the Troubles being so traumatic.  Maybe I was oblivious in college, maybe I had a less impassioned tour guide.  Maybe the world looks a little different now than it did.  But this time I just about cried at every stop.

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall"

The only good use for a wall is as a canvas for protest

One thing I did enjoy about Belfast was getting a glimpse of the Game of Thrones studio and a corner of their last set, King’s Landing.  

Green screen and King's Landing: yellow cranes not included in the series

And we stopped by Dunluce Castle once we’d left town as well, now better known as Castle Greyjoy.
 

A very drafty workplace

The Giant’s Causeway was what I’d really come for—something that had been on my bucket list since I first lived in Dublin.  Legend claims that these geometrical formations were put down by the giant Fionn Mac Cumhaill paving his way to Scotland, but in this case science is wilder than legend.  The stones are so regular and so numerous, it’s almost easier to believe a giant put them there than it is to accept that they are a natural phenomenon.

I'd have you know it took significant effort to get a few shots of the rock formations without tourists in the picture

Our last stop on that tour was Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge.  The first bridge to this island was put up by salmon fishermen hundreds of years ago, but there aren’t enough salmon anymore to sustain commercial fishing, so tourism has taken over instead.  We tourists happily pay real money and then wait in a long line for a chance to cross this wobbling bridge a hundred feet above the turquoise water—twice: once over, once back.  I absolutely loved it and I’d pay to do it again.

The reason the line was so long was that people kept stopping to take pictures of each other on the bridge

The abandoned quarry nearby was also a Game of Thrones filming location, but our guide, who has never seen GoT, told us simply that it was the site of “a battle,” which, given the context, was a little unspecific.  So here’s a picture of the coastline instead.
 

It probably doesn't look like this when it's raining

After Dublin, I took the train to Killarney to spend a few days exploring the southwest of Ireland, one of the only areas of the Republic that I hadn’t gotten to visit when I was studying abroad.  Side note: I hate trains.  Even on a bus, that most plebeian of public transports, someone will stow your luggage for you in a secured compartment.  On a train?  Good luck lifting that suitcase over your head to wedge it into a luggage rack by yourself, and keep your fingers crossed that it’s still there when you reach your destination.  Also, you might be able to sit in the seat you reserved.  Or there might already be someone in it who looks offended when you tell them they're in your spot; they might or might not move.  It’s sort of a whimsical, fly-by-night organizational system.  Have fun with that.

But Killarney is very cute.

Killarney: the cute part

Because I suffer from a common American handicap (i.e. I can’t drive on the left-hand side of the road), I took coach tours to the places I wanted to see: the Ring of Kerry, the Dingle Peninsula, and the Gap of Dunloe.  I can now say that the Ring of Kerry isn’t best seen from a bus, even the small 16-seater I was in.  On the narrow, shoulder-less road, there are very few overlook points to stop at, so if (like me) you happen to be sitting on the wrong side of the bus, your trip consists mostly of looking at hedges.  Here’s the best of what I got from Kerry:

Waterville: a town with a creative name

A cottage abandoned during the Irish Potato Famine, framed by, if you'll look at the bottom of the frame, a hedge!

One of the overlook points we did get to visit

Taken from the bus window: sometimes it works

Ladies' View

Dingle Peninsula has all the same problems as the Ring of Kerry (narrow roads, few places to stop), and yet I enjoyed that trip much more—either because my bar had been lowered or because it wasn’t nearly as crowded as Kerry had been, so we didn’t have to pass up any overlook points because there was nowhere to park.  Also, Dingle is the most charming little town in the sunshine!

 

Inch Beach, with dog

The Shire?

Slea Head, with cheeky seagull

Bray Head

Dingle Town! Also probably doesn't look like this when it's raining

The Gap of Dunloe isn’t so much a tour as it is a transport service: the bus takes you from Killarney to one end of the gap between the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks and the Purple Mountains, drops you off, and picks you up on the other side several hours later.  In between, you either walk or hire a horse and cart for the seven mile trip through the mountains, and then you boat through the Killarney Lakes to find the bus again at Ross Castle. 

Mind the Gap

This is my kind of tour.  I love walking (as long as it’s not raining) because you see so much more and you can take as many pictures as you want!

A bridge

A horse!

Could I have taken this picture from a the window of a moving bus? I ask you

View from a bridge (not the one in the first picture)

Cotton-candy flavored sheep (the coloring is actually for identification purposes)

The downhill part

The part where Frodo says, "Get off the road!" (jk)

One of my favorite pictures from the trip

A horse and trap

Our companion boat entering Loch Leane

Grateful for this beautiful little adventure, and equally grateful for good weather and good hiking boots, I reluctantly returned to Dublin (see above for my feelings about trains) for my flight home.  That may be all my travel adventures for the summer, but already the wanderlust is setting back in, and I’m sure it won’t be too long before I hit the road (or the skies, or the seas) yet again!

Go West, Young-ish Woman

When I was a kid, I heard someone say the Grand Canyon was the biggest ditch in the world.  So I didn’t have any particular desire to visit it until I grew up and started seeing pictures.  Once I did that, I had to see it for myself.  So in early May, my dad and I decided to take a road trip.

Well, a road trip that started with a flight.  We flew from the East Coast into Las Vegas and rented a car from there.  I can’t say Vegas really charmed me, but it was where my parents met and got married.  (When I lead with that, I always have to wipe the shock off people’s faces by adding that it was at Nellis Air Force Base, not a Chapel O’ Love, and they were married by a priest, not somebody dressed as Elvis.)

The casino where we stayed the night--and didn't play a single slot machine!

The chapel at Nellis AFB where my parents got married

I’m not an off-road sort of person, so our trip didn’t involve any backpacking, white-river rafting, or long-distance hiking.  Our itinerary took in no hard-to-reach places, and we didn’t make it to the North Rim because we were in the area two days before the road opened for the summer.  Most of my pictures look a lot like the ones all the other on-road sort of people take, from all the same places, but they’re different to me because I was there, behind the camera.  And boy, was that a good place to be!  So I’ll try to keep it simple, with a few of my favorite pictures and an anecdote or two….

Hoover Dam

The very first stop on our trip wasn't on the itinerary.  My dad remembered that our route took us right past Hoover Dam, so we figured we'd take a look at this feat of engineering.  I was actually more interested in the bridge than the dam, but still, engineering.

The Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, seen from the Hoover Dam

Grand Canyon, South Rim

My dad’s nickname in the Air Force was Stormy, and after my foggy trip to the Faroes last summer, we joked that I should be nicknamed Misty, because everywhere we go, bad weather follows us.  The two worst weather days on our trip were the days we were at the Grand Canyon: clouds that swallowed the sunset the first day, thunderstorms that closed the road to Hermit’s Rest the second.  But how many pictures have you seen of the Grand Canyon in bad weather?

But we did catch a few nice glimpses from Moran Point on the morning we drove back through the park on our way to Kayenta!

Above the clouds, it's always sunny!

Monument Valley

I felt like we were in a Ford truck commercial the whole time we were in Monument Valley, and not just because it looked like the set of one.  This was where, in Brad Paisley’s words, we “got a little mud on the tires.”  Ninety-five percent of the seventeen-mile dirt road was flying red dust, but the other five percent was a mass of huge puddles left by the rain the day before!  Worth it, though.

Navajo National Monument

This was a spur-of-the-moment side trip recommended by our server at a diner in Kayenta.  We had a few extra hours in the morning before heading to Page, and this was more or less on the way.  I only have a little point-and-shoot without a proper zoom lens, but from the end of Sandal Trail, you can see the remains of a cliff dwelling abandoned by the Anasazi in the thirteenth century.

This is an artificially zoomed-in section of the picture above.

Antelope Canyon

I’d never even heard of slot canyons until a former student of mine visited Antelope and posted about it on Facebook, and I’m so glad he did!  Because Antelope Canyon is on Navajo Nation land, you can only visit it with a tour guide.  Of the several companies that run tours, we went with Adventurous Antelope Canyon, and we were delighted with our experience! 

Not only did we see Antelope, the most popular slot canyon in the area, but we also got to visit Owl and Rattlesnake Canyons, and because (for some reason I couldn’t guess) fewer people want to see these, my dad and I had our tour guide—and in fact, almost the entirety of both canyons—to ourselves! 

One of these is Owl Canyon and the other is Rattlesnake. My dad and I can't agree on which is which.

Navajo Village

This little attraction is Page is easy to miss (it’s literally tucked in behind a gas station on the edge of town), but it was one of my favorite things we did—another spur-of-the-moment addition after we saw signs for it the day before.  Our trip focused on the natural beauty of Arizona and Utah, but Navajo Village gave a morning dedicated to the history and culture of one of the native peoples of the area.  Our hosts showed us around a hogan, demonstrated spinning wool for blanket weaving, and performed a spectacular hoop dance for us! 

I’ll share a picture from inside the hogan, since it’s too easy for photos of people to be separated from their proper attribution online, and it would seem like a poor thanks to that hoop dancer, even though we had permission and encouragement to photograph him, to put up a picture that could be separated from his name and the name of the Navajo Village.  If you want to see the dance, go see it in person and support this terrific small business!

Horseshoe Bend

Before we visited Horseshoe Bend (another ad-lib decision, since we were going right by it), I had heard only two things about it: someone just recently died taking a selfie there, and it was a must-see.  Now, having visited, I understand both: there are plenty of cliffs to fall off of, but the view is worth the risk!

This is a panorama. Horseshoe Bend is too big to get in one shot!

Bryce Canyon

We hadn’t planned on visiting Bryce Canyon either, but it turns out I’m not very good at reading calendars, so we ended up with an extra day at the end of our trip before our flight left from Las Vegas.  So we thought, why not?  And it was one of the best things we did!  But with all due respect to Ebenezer Bryce and his irrigation ditch, couldn’t they have come up with a more descriptive name for this sandcastle fairyland of red cliffs and hoodoos?

Zion National Park

We didn’t have time, on our way back from Bryce, to take the shuttle to the most scenic spots in Zion National Park; we had to stick to the one road where private vehicles are allowed.  But even so, the mountains are majestic.

 

Back in Las Vegas, we ended our trip with a visit to the Bellagio fountain show on the evening before our flight.

Finally, a bit sunburned and still shaking red dust out of our shoes, off we went, back to the land of lakes and forests, where the sky may be a little smaller, but the air smells like growing things.  I am so grateful I had the opportunity to visit the Southwest, and to see it with my dad, who is a remarkably patient travel partner.  The only question now is, where to next?

Misty and Stormy :-)