Ireland by the numbers

  • months spent planning this trip: 3
  • books read in preparation: 18
  • films watched in preparation: 10
  • TV series watched in preparation: 5
  • days on the island: 83
  • cars rented: 3
  • jaunting cars rented: 1
  • miles driven: 3452
  • accidents or fender-benders: 0
  • countries visited: 2
  • counties visited:
    • Ireland: 22 of 26
    • Northern Ireland: 3 of 6
  • national parks visited: 5 of 6
  • fjords visited: 3 of 3
  • stone forts visited: 5
  • coastal rings driven: 3
  • days over 70°F: 1
  • hikes: 25
  • wild goats seen on hikes: 29
  • snakes seen on hikes: 0 (thank you, St. Patrick!)
  • bike rides: 1
  • yoga practices: 7
  • Airbnbs rented: 14
  • blogs written: 62
  • photos saved: 2762 
  • favorite pubs: 11 (of approximately 80)
  • delicious Irish craft IPAs: 12
  • Irish whiskeys sampled: 11
  • ginger snaps consumed: 166 (approximate)

Haulbowline

Haulbowline Island

We were surprised to see navy ships docked around a small island in Cork Harbour. Turns out it’s Haulbowline Island, the headquarters of the Irish Naval Service, the maritime component of the Irish Defence Forces. Why should I be surprised that the Republic of Ireland has a navy? The country is almost entirely surrounded by water.

the LÉ Samuel Beckett

Current fleet size: 9 patrol vessels, plus several smaller training vessels. Four of the patrol vessels are named after Irish authors. Now, that’s my kind of navy!

the LÉ James Joyce

Major roles (according to Wikipedia): fisheries protection, sea patrol, surveillance, and smuggling prevention.

The owner of our hotel claims that it’s the only navy in the world that comes home every evening for tea!

Happy days!

Dublin from the air

I have read nothing but Irish literature, history, and mythology for the past five months, and enjoyed every word. (Well, almost. The Gaelic, or Irish, words are mystifying. Even when reading to myself, I try to hear them in my mind. Inevitably there are either too many consonants or too many vowels sequentially to even know where to begin. In the rare event that the author tries to help by spelling a word phonetically, I am dumbfounded. How do they get a “w” sound out of “dh”? A “c” followed by an “e” or “i” has a hard “k” sound, as in the Irish word for church, cille (pronounced “kill”). Irish, apparently, is not related to any of the languages I’ve ever studied.) So you can imagine my excitement on my very first introduction to Herself.

Upon our wake-up call at 6:00 on our approach to Dublin, Marcus noted that sunlight was edging over the horizon. I flipped up the window shade and watched the curtain going up on Ireland. The buffeting winds and thunderclouds we had been promised by the captain as we tumbled off into dreamland only a few hours before were only cottony wisps revealing teasing glimpses of fairy villages in the darkness below, twinkling like the proverbial pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. As Ireland rolled over to greet the sun, the darkness became a deep, emerald green. I smiled. Something tells me this is going to be an amazing trip. As the Irish say, “Happy days!”

Happy trails!

at home on the St. Lucie River

We are home again, and it feels so good to be here. We’re looking forward to a long, beautiful Florida winter in one place, with no suitcases to pack and unpack, pack and unpack, pack and unpack.

We don’t use our elevator much, but there are a few times when it comes in extremely handy, like when you have a broken leg (Marcus 2017) or a carload of luggage, crates, tote bags, and a very heavy cooler to get up to the second and third floors (the day we got home). No sweat! We put the first load of stuff into the elevator and pushed the button. Nothing happened. After several failed attempts to get it operational–and after a long day driving–Marcus eventually had to lug everything upstairs himself. Add to to-do list: call elevator repair guy.

We spent several hours digging in to our first phase of unpacking. Lots of sweat! The AC chugged and wheezed, but only managed to push out air just slightly cooler than the ambient air. “It will catch up,” Marcus assured me. Exhausted, I showered and went to bed. I was very much looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again, but I just couldn’t get comfortable. The AC still wasn’t performing up to snuff, and I don’t sleep well in a room over 70°F. It was a fitful night. The next day, Marcus waffled over whether we should pay the premium for a weekend service call. “Do it!” I told him. “It’s either that or pay twice as much for me to stay in a hotel this weekend.” Add to to-do list: call AC repair guy.

I was looking forward to driving my Cute Little Blue Car again, to catch up on some long-delayed errands. The garage door opened easily, but wouldn’t close again. After considerable jostling with the door, the sensor, and the remotes, Marcus got it to cooperate…until the next time we tried to close it. Add to to-do list: call garage door repair guy.

Apparently our house missed us these past six weeks. I suppose, now that it’s in its teen years, it’s getting sullen and irritable when we’re away for too long. Makes me a wee bit thoughtful about planning any more extended trips. *pause* Okay, I’m over it. I’m thinking about Ireland next spring…three months traveling the whole island, north and south. What do you think?

Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland

So, I need to get busy reading for the trip. Any good Irish literature you’d like to recommend? Send me an email.

And so, my friends, happy trails to you until we meet again–wherever the spinning compass may take us. Thanks for coming on this adventure. It was good to have you along.

Best~ Cindy

The Smoke at Dawn

Chattanooga’s manhole covers

My first thought regarding Chattanooga, when I started planning this trip, was the Civil War battle that occurred there that some would argue was the death knell for the Confederacy. A year or so ago I read a biography of Ulysses Grant (a distant ancestor, I’ve since learned), and the Civil War battles in the western theater became more than just names of remote places. I began to understand the significance of Grant’s victories, not just in terms of land acquisition and enemy soldiers killed and captured, but also of gaining strategic control of the Mississippi River, closing off supply lines to the Confederacy, etc. It was an eye-opener.

Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park

To better understand the battle in Chattanooga, and read it from a different author’s perspective, I chose Jeff Shaara’s The Smoke at Dawn. You may have heard of The Killer Angels, an historical fiction about the Battle of Gettysburg written by his father, Michael Shaara. It was made into a movie, Gettysburg, in 1993. It’s safe to say that that movie forever changed how I viewed the study of history. It transformed vague names in a textbook into people who once lived and breathed, loved and hated, and felt so compelled to preserve the way of life they valued that they went to war for it, sometimes against their own dearest friends and family members. It made history personal for me.

Chickamauga

After Michael Shaara’s death, his son Jeff wrote over a dozen novels about the Civil War. The books are based on extensive research into the politics of the times, the battles, and the men who orchestrated and fought them. For additional readability, Shaara added undocumented–but credible–dialog; hence his books are considered historical fiction.

Civil War memorial on Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga

So, back to Chattanooga…as we approached the city I started scanning the horizon for Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, key geographical features in the evolution of the battle. When we went downtown for dinner that night, I looked again and was horribly confused. I kept looking for the mountain and the ridge across the Tennessee River from the city, but they were behind me. And then my nephew explained that after the war, they moved the city from the north side of the river to the south. I had so closely studied Shaara’s maps that I struggled with the orientation of the “new” Chattanooga the whole time we were there.

amazing views of Chattanooga and the Tennessee River from Lookout Mountain

When exploring the Battle of Chattanooga in situ, it’s best to start at Chickamauga, Georgia, just ten miles away. The Battle of Chickamauga happened just prior to that at Chattanooga, and the National Park Service has created one park to commemorate both battles. There wasn’t much to see about Chattanooga at the park, aside from an excellent movie in the visitor center that linked the two battles. After touring the park, we drove up Lookout Mountain. Point Park, on the mountaintop overlooking the city, is little more than a scenic overlook with very little information on the battle. I would have loved to see some informational plaques pointing out strategic landmarks of the battle. Ah, well, I’ve got vivid images in my head, thanks to the gift of a wonderful writer.

Assateague Island National Seashore

 

We left Bethany Beach and drove down the Delmarva peninsula toward our next stop: Cape Charles, Virginia, on the eastern shore. Just south of Ocean City, Maryland, I saw a sign for Assateague Island National Seashore. I’ve always wanted to see the wild horses on the barrier islands of Assateague and Chincoteague since reading Misty of Chincoteague in fifth grade, but I had heard that the horses are only on the islands seasonally. So we stopped by Tourist Information to get the scoop. Turns out the horses are present on both islands year round. 

The woman at TI explained the difference between the horse habitats. Assateague Island is owned by the government and is maintained by the National Park Service. The horses there are wild; the only human intervention is birth control. Scientists discovered that if the horse population grew to over 100, the plant life on the island suffered, which affected the biological balance of the whole island–flora and fauna. So to strike a healthy balance, they allow each mare to foal only once. After the first foal, the mares are inoculated to prevent conception. This year’s census was in the low 80s, and the island is thriving.

On Chincoteague Island, the horses run wild but are technically owned by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company. They control their horse population by rounding up some of the younger horses each summer to sell at auction to raise funds for the fire department.

We opted to visit Assateague, since Tourist Information was so close to the National Seashore entrance. It was a perfect-weather day for exploring the park. We saw probably 20 horses, some up close and others farther away, and we had a picnic lunch under the cedar trees on a bayside beach.

The horses are magnificent, and I commend our National Park Service for preserving their habitat so they can continue to run wild. The island is a beautiful place to visit. We especially loved the boardwalk through the salt marsh where we saw lots of wildlife.

Hot bar!

The Fire Bar at Hawkeye’s

Recommended by our hosts at the B&B: The Fire Bar at the Hawkeye Bar & Grill at Cooperstown’s Otesaga Resort Hotel. Perfect spot to chill with a glass of wine, a bite to eat, and maybe even a game of bocce on the lawn, if you’re not too mesmerized by the view. 

The Otesaga Resort Hotel is located at the south end of Otsego Lake in the Village of Cooperstown, New York, and hearkens back to the day when people from the City spent their summers at grand hotels such as this. 

 

James Fenimore Cooper referred to Otsego Lake as Glimmerglass in his Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels featuring the character Natty Bumppo, also known as Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, one of the Leatherstocking Tales. The lake also happens to be the source of the Susquehanna River, the 16th largest river in the United States, according to Wikipedia.

It’s no coincidence that Cooper’s stories took place in the area around Cooperstown. His father founded the village, and James grew up in what was then a 19th-century frontier town.

the sun setting on Glimmerglass (Otsego) Lake

The weather was perfect on this particular evening, a cloudless, late-spring promise of blissful summer days ahead. As the sun set we drew our chairs closer to the fire and watched for dugout canoes gliding silently across the Glimmerglass.

FDR

Eleanor and Franklin greeted us at Springwood, his family home in Hyde Park

Our first day of sightseeing on the Grand Niagara Tour: We headed up the Hudson River Valley to Hyde Park, New York. I’ve always wanted to visit the home and presidential library of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I didn’t know much about the Roosevelts, but I’d heard enough to be intrigued. Now, after spending two days in their midst, I want to know more. I’m researching biographies. Any recommendations?

FDR was born and raised at the family home of Springwood, and didn’t leave until his fourteenth year to attend boarding school in Massachusetts. At eighteen he attended Harvard, and four years later law school at Columbia. He didn’t take to law school and left to study law on his own. He passed the bar exam on his first attempt. Not bad for being self-taught!

Springwood

There’s so much more to his life and all that he accomplished for his state and country. Most remarkably, he accomplished what Herbert Hoover could not: He rescued this country from the Great Depression. His ideas were radical, as they needed to be, and he started putting them into place within a few months of taking office.

After two successful terms as president, America, on the brink of world war, voted him in to a third term of office. At the end of his third term, and this time actively in the midst of war, America elected him to an unprecedented fourth term. Sadly, he died as he, Churchill, and Stalin were laying the groundwork for a post-war world, just months before the war ended. Yet his legacy for peace lives on, predominantly in his dream of the United Nations.

I didn’t realize the FDR Presidential Library was not only the first presidential library, a concept that Roosevelt came up with himself as a quiet place to work while in Hyde Park, but also the only one ever used by a president while still in office. It’s a repository chock-full of papers (both his and Eleanor’s), memorabilia, and artwork. I loved seeing all the little animals on the desk he used in the Oval Office. It reminds me of my own!

I thought I would have no interest in a temporary exhibit called War Art, motivational posters from World War Two. I passed through the display, vaguely glancing at the walls. My pace slowed, however, as the message began to hit home: Americans were called upon to make incredible sacrifices during the war. Not just rationing and victory gardens, but also collecting scrap metals, rubber from tires, glass, clothing and rags (and we thought we invented recycling!); working extra hours and improving efficiencies in the work place to cover the Americans who were fighting overseas; volunteering for everything from scrap collection to rolling bandages; being mum about the war effort to avoid spreading information that could help the enemy; and so much more. Buying war bonds was especially important. Just imagine the daunting challenge of funding a global war right after the Great Depression! If it hadn’t been for Roosevelt’s New Deal, this country wouldn’t have had the infrastructure to get through a world war.

When they elected him president, many Americans did not realize FDR was paralyzed from the waist down. He was never photographed in his wheelchair and only publicly mentioned his disability once, in the last year of his life.

Being a spectator during the wars America has been involved in over the past 50+ years is nothing like supporting a massive world-war effort on a daily basis for almost four years. The Greatest Generation? You bet! We could all learn a lesson on sacrifice, honor, and integrity.

Under construction

We are home and planning our next adventure because the compass never stops spinning. Check out my Future Adventures tab to see some of the possibilities! I’d love your feedback and ideas.