Grandma and Grandpa joined us on our summer vacation. The whole family went to Ireland. This was really a unique trip, the first time we have ever traveled abroad as a family. We spent a week touring around the country and having lots of adventures.
I've got a ton of pictures. Let's take it one day at a time.
Friday:
We arrive in Dublin airport
Grandma and Grandpa were coming from Salt Lake City. Their flight was delayed a few hours, so we caught up on missed sleep at the airport food court.
We picked up our rental cars. They had a pair of Toyota C-HRs for us to tour around Ireland. They look like this:
There was just enough room to fit our bags:
Jen getting used to the driver's seat on the other side of the car. (Many, many times we flicked on our wipers as we attempted to signal a lane change.)
The first place we visited on Saturday was Gobbins Cliff Pass. Gob is an Irish word for mouth or face as in "shut your gob". So "Gobbins" was named for the Irish headlands.
It was an awesome trail, built right on the side of a cliff, but with plenty of protective handrails, it offered a unique perspective of the cliffs.
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| I'll admit it is hard to really see in the photo, but off in the distance you can see the shore of Scotland. |
Next we went to Dunluce castle. This was quite a cool old castle ruin, built on the edge of cliff (In fact part of the castle had fallen into the sea on a stormy night a long time ago.) The view was amazing. The wind was amazing. The imagination gets going with a backdrop like this. This castle was the seat of the clan McDonnell- not sure how closely they were connected to our McConnell ancestors, but probably connected somehow.
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| That's where the kitchen slipped into the ocean one night. |
Then we went to the Giant's Causeway. We love a good pile of rocks to climb on, don't we? As lava cools slowly it starts to shrink and create stress in the material. The stress is most effectively relieved by splitting at 120 degrees, so lots of hexagons. Or legendary Irish heroes could have done this.
Everything is so quaint and charming in Ireland
Sunday:
We attended church with the Foyle Ward in Londonderry. It was a good service and a friendly ward. All of Northern Ireland is one stake, so the visiting high councilor came from Belfast to speak to the congregation. The ward was small, with a lot of other out of town visitors like us.
Next we walked around Londonderry including the Derry walls and the Peace Bridge. The Derry walls are one of the best maintained old city walls in Europe. The Peace Bridge was built to recognize the history of Londonderry/ Derry during the troubles. This bridge crosses the Foyle river and connects politically and religiously different neighborhoods.
We then crossed back into the Republic of Ireland for the rest of the trip.
Our Roxborough ancestors are from County Londonderry, and our McConnell ancestors are from County Donegal. These are not very far apart, but modern history has separated these two locations across an international boundary. By the way, as we were driving from Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland, we were on a small country road and there was no indication when we crossed this international border.
Our next destination was Raphoe. This is a small town where the McConnells are from. According to my research, my great-great grandparents were married in the First Presbyterian Church, and some other family members helped contribute to the building of the church. The cemetery does indeed have some McConnells and McCleans, but they are much more recent than any of my direct ancestors.
We then continued on to Donegal Castle. This castle is partially restored.
This castle was controlled by another family with a similar name to McConnell, so not sure if there is any connection here.
Then we went further south along the west coast of Ireland to County Mayo to see some sites associated with Jen's ancestors.
We found this cottage, which was not actually the place her ancestors lived, but has a very similar appearance.
That night we had a devotional in the hotel. Spencer gave us a lesson about the McConnell and Doyle family crest and what the symbols mean. The younger kids reported on the lives of their ancestors that emigrated from Ireland.
Monday:
I woke up feeling terrible. I got food poisoning, with all the expected GI symptoms. No one else got sick. Must have been the lamb I had the night before. Ughh...
Also, it rained a lot on Monday. We saw a bit of rain on other days, but Monday was a good old fashioned Irish rainy day.
Any way we carried on, and did a few amazing things.
We drove out to Killary to a sheep dog demonstration. The countryside in this region was really amazing. It was fun to watch the herdsman call out his instructions and see how readily the dog responded to round up those sheep. The demonstration included shearing a sheep. (Only Grandpa jumped up for that one), and feeding the lambs. (The lambs are about 4 months old now and can down a bottle of milk in a few seconds!)
We then traveled to Cong, at the estate of Ashford Castle for a Hawk Walk (falconry experience). This was the most popular activity we did all week.
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| By the way, check out those Irish eyes! |
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| How about that color combination? |
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| Now, we'd have been OK without the hats, but isn't it amazing that it was cool enough in August to wear this cold weather gear? By the way, Spencer doesn't get cold, so he bought this fashionable flat cap instead. |
We did the crossing back to Doolin.
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| We got seats right in the front row of the upper balcony of the Gaiety Theatre. |
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| Laurel did an Irish Dance performance recently and has been really excited about this. |
Great music (drums, fiddle and bagpipes included) and of course all the furious foot stepping action.
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| How many people can we fit in a lift? |
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| We drove 1200 km on this trip! |
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| This trip was a lot of work, and not everything went swimmingly, but overall it was a great adventure and I will remember this week fondly. |
