Tales From The Travels

After leaving Sligo we took a ferry from Dublin to Cherbourg,  France. It was a 17-hour, over-night trip on a very comfortable ship - the W.B. Yeats. The weather was nice and the transit was uneventful, but I really enjoyed being at sea again and was something of a pain telling Sherry all of the sea lore.  I spent six of my ten active-duty Navy years on ships. Unlike many of my shipmates, I loved being at sea and always looked forward to the next time we got underway whenever we pulled into port. It's just a really different environment out there from what we normally experience, filled with all sorts of adventures ranging from the very boring to the frightenly  exciting.  It was only an overnight ferry ride, but it really brought back a ton of memories. Both good ones and bad. I did my time on ships and don't want to go back, but it was nice to be reminded of that time in my life. At the end we were in France and that was a whole new adventure.

We left Ireland today after a week's stay. Let me start out by saying I love Ireland and the Irish are some of the most charming and pleasant people I've ever met. A really wonderful country. I've been lucky to have spent about two months here this spring and my thought is "Why did it take me so long?"  It's cold in Ireland, though. The entire island is further north than the continental US, even north of New Fundland and the same North Atlantic currents that keep it from getting overly cold in the winter also keep it from getting very warm in summer. Typical high temps were in the 50s F. Much like a Texas winter day.  I first came in April for about seven weeks of hiking and hiked the Wicklow Way, the Kerry Way, and roughly half of the Dingle Way. About 260 miles total. I went home to take care of some issues there and returned in June with Sherry. We spent several days in Dublin before going west to the town of Sligo. While there we visited Coney Island and ...

I came home for two and a half weeks because I wanted to be with Sherry while we were going through a very tumultuous period. I'm so glad I did. I've been overwhelmed almost every day since I came back. I'm really glad Sherry didn't have to do it all on her own. The two-month remodeling we started in January was still in-progress at five months; she moved her retirement up from December to May; the mental health school she taught at decided to bring in violent juvenile delinquents who were attacking the staff and plotting murders to facilitate their escape; and she was moving out of her house and into mine. That's in addition to everything else. It has been mayhem! We have muscled through everything and kept going forward. The remodel job is down to some detail work; Sherry retired and got out of that bad environment; and we got her out if her house and into mine. The house looks like a warehouse, but we made some progress on the weeding out (we both gave up stuff) ...