How The West Was Spun

Montana Part 1

We had a very nice time in Montana.  The show was not as well attended as we would have hoped, but what the heck? - we got to tour western Montana, and it is really as beautiful as the tourist brochures show.  Lovely and green and cool, with lots of mountains.  My kinda place!

And although the show was kind of a bust, we got to spend time with Marcia and Himself, as well as an old work buddy, Sharon and her husband, Michael.  It was great fun to get caught back up and visit not via email for a change.

After the show, D and I drove east over Chief Joseph's Pass to spend a couple of days at a really quiet cabin about 45 minutes north of Yellowstone (outside the Bozeman area). Here's the peaceful view out the living room window:

Tuesday, we made the decision to see if we could ride in the park.  We didn't have our 2 horses with us, so we contacted an outfitter and they had space for an all-day ride, so off we went.  Hell's A'Roarin outfitters has a large ranch which borders the northern edge of the park.  Here's their pack string at the ranch gaits:

My horse, Red Devil, was a red roan Quarterhorse and a very nice boy, although pokey pokey pokey.  (I feel sure most of the time these horses never move above a walk.  Ever.)

The first half of the ride was basically all uphill.  We saw a deer with two fawns that couldn't have been more than a day old seeking some shade under a big Ponderosa pine.  Some areas of the trail were still under snow, and our guide said this was the first trip up this trail he had taken that season.  It was a fairly small group.  D looks like he's having fun tho, doesn't he?

Our final destination on the way up was Fawn Lake, which is in a gorgeous alpine setting and absolutely crystal clear.

We sat here and had lunch before venturing back down to the ranch.  A really fun ride, and since it's all National Forest land, we can bring our crew back and ride this area on our own (which we definitely plan to do!!)

More photos of our Yellowstone tour in the next day or so.

All for now......

Random Photos of the Trip

Carvings on Victorian buildings in Dublin:

The North Sea - looking towards Scotland and the outer islands:

A Rowan tree (and the puppy's namesake) complete with orange berries:

Sea roses:

The shores of Loch Lomond:

 

The heather

View of Ben Nevis and the Trossachs

All for now......

Castles

Where else are you going to find old castles except Europe?  Really - we have nothing to compare them to in the U.S.

While in Scotland, we toured two castles that are kind of at different ends of the spectrum, but both interesting and beautiful in their own way.

We visited Loch Leven (pronounced lee-ven) which is a small loch just along the highlands border.  There a few small islands in the loch and upon one of them a castle was built and appears in the history as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century. The castle was used by members of the Scottish royal family during the century, but afterwards was the island home of the Douglass family.  It was the Douglass's who hosted Mary, Queen of Scots, as an honored guest, but later the castle was used to imprison her for just under a year (late 1567- early 1568).  Mary eventually escaped from the island castle and tried to rally her supporters behind her, but ultimately was forced into exile in England within a month.

A view across the loch on approach to the castle.

The main tower walls.

 

And a view of the loch from the parapet outside the tower where Mary was held prisoner.

The walls are in a bit of a state of ruin, but you can still get a feel for the cold stones and how damp and dreary it would likely have been during the winters.  As you can see from the view of the loch shot, there isn't a whole lot of space between the castle and the water, and 400 years ago, there would have been a lot less.  The whole island at that time was only big enough for the castle, its outer walls and enough rocky shore to pull a small boat up.  The water level in the loch dropped dramatically in the 18th century due to a dam project designed to furnish water power for mills at the end of the river which runs through the loch and the island gained quite a bit of acreage because of that.

The other castle we visited, which is at the other end of the "kept up" spectrum is Stirling Castle in the town of Stirling.  This is a large, rambling set of building, walls and parapets which has been used over the years as defensive as well as royal housing.  It has a commanding view of the town of Stirling (and nearby site of the Braveheart/William Wallace Battle of Stirling Bridge site).

The castle has been kept up and added to over the years, and they are in the midst of a major renovation project on the buildings.  The oldest stone buildings have been restored back to close to their original "high use" timeframe.  The structures built by James V for his new queen, Mary of Guise, are in the process of being restored.

One of the original stone towers:

And one of the palace buildings built during James V's reign.

And one of the best parts of the tour was the tapestry weaver's exhibit/cottage.  The Historic Trust is having a set of Unicorn tapestries woven to hang in the great hall of the building shown above. This is a 12-year project to weave the set of seven tapestries (two are completed and cut off the looms already).  They have a small staff of weavers who work on them and you can go in and watch the weavers at work.  (Disclaimer:  This is a contraband photo.  There were signs up all over not to talk to the weavers, but I didn't see the one that said "no photos" until we walked out the door to leave - that was only posted on the exterior of the building....so.... oops - sorry.)

They are obviously spending a lot of time, money and effort on this restoration, and I think it will amazing when it's completed. 

Tomorrow - final photos.

All for now.....

Wool and Trekking

While in Scotland, D and I toured the Scottish Wool Centre, which really is a spot to buy outlet woolens, but they also have some "related" entertainment items.  The centre houses a Birds of Prey exhibit, and they run sheep-herding/border collie demonstrations at various times.  We happened to be there on a day when their shepherd, Duncan (a very large, red-haired chap) was working his youngest dog, Meg, who is 7 months old.

Meg already knows all the commands and she did a fine job working this small group of sheep, including cutting the small dark lamb and her spotted mum out of the group at the end of the demonstration.

They also had a small spinning demonstration where a volunteer was sitting, spinning on her Haldane wheel (oof - lovely thing!).  Interestingly enough, she assured me they spin everything in the grease and only scour it when it's finished.  I had found almost no yarn on my tour at all (mostly the shops carried acrylic blends and Debbie Bliss - and not much else), so I was happy to see a small display of handspun yarns which their volunteers spin up while they are sitting, demonstrating.  So, the only yarn I bought on the entire trip was a small batch (5 skeins - probably about 700 yards total) of gray woolen handspun. 

The price was right - 10 pounds Sterling (about 20 US dollars) for the batch, and the older lady who spun it, Jean, sounds like my kinda gal.  She apparently quit counting birthdays at 78 (which was several years ago) since she thought 80 sounded "old".  I suppose 78 sounds young at some point - I hope I have her attitude when I get there myself.

The same day, we also went trekking, aka horseback riding, at a farm not too far from the Woolen Centre, near Aberfoyle.  The farm is still a working farm and the gentleman who owns it does trekking groups to help supplement the cash income from the place.  D and I had signed on for the 2-hour tour, and we were assigned a pair of matching horses: Black and white piebalds (we'd call em paint horses), which were draft horse crosses (I've seen this same type of horse called a Gypsy Vanner horse as they often were used to pull gypsy carts).  Massive feet, the size of bread plates and huge, wide backs.

This is Sam, D's friend for the day. As D mounted up, the perky tour guide commented cheerfully, "He's a butt-biter, be careful not to let him too close to anyone else."

This is Walter, who I rode (post-ride, considering his apple treat I brought for him).  Walter is usually ridden by one of the staff, but they had a lot of riders that day so they let me ride him.

 

Sam and Walter apparently decided they needed to have "boy" issues about who would be first and when we had them canter, Sam would try very hard to be in front (or at least catch up to the little mare who rode with us and...well.... bite her butt) and Walter, who normally IS in front, took that as an insult, so D and I had to have some "discussions" with the two of them about minding their manners.  They were good boys overall though, and we got to walk, trot and canter around the farm, crossed some streams, and had a lovely view of the valley from their big hay pasture.

Walter, interestingly enough, was bitten by a snake 3 or so years ago.  He recovered from that, but since then has developed A) extremely sensitive skin and B) a change in his body chemistry so that he is like a bug magnet.  These two things combined make him a rather grouchy boy as the flies love him and if he's out without protection, he gets bitten, and then the bites swell up and he gets a hive-like reaction to them.

So..... the barn folks created a sort of horse covering which is made of a fine, lightweight black mesh.  It covers him from the tips of his ears down to where the saddle meets his back, and extends down over his chest to where the knee-high gaiters meet the edge of the netting.  He looks a bit like a medieval destrier, and when he gathers his rather...um.... solid form to go into a canter, the ground practically shakes beneath him.

 

Two more posts, if y'all can stand them - next post on castles and then a "favorite pictures" overview and I promise I'm done.

All for now.......

Museums

While D was otherwise occupied doing his conference stuff, my parents and I did a lot of museum-y things in Ireland.

Our first day out, we walked back through the Botanical Gardens to the (free!) Ulster Museum.  This museum has a lot of different things - sort of a mishmash, but mostly all interesting.  They had one large exhibit on flax production and linen weaving; Belfast was a major center for that at the turn of the century.  They had some great old production looms set up, including one that had the dearest little painted iron details on it.

We also toured the Ulster-American Museum which chronicles life in Ireland (mostly in the nineteenth century before the largest waves of immigration) and what the immigrants found and how they lived once they got to the U.S.  A very clever presentation - they have buildings representing Irish life in the 1800s (complete with peat fires, which were VERY needed as it was pouring and in the 50s most of the day) which you could walk through, and then a reproduced street in downtown Belfast.

From here, you walked through the streets of town out onto the "docks" where you boarded a ship, and when you walked off the far side of the ship....you walked into a typical nineteenth century American town.  Further on, you could tour U.S. buildings and see what the U.S. side of the immigration coin looked like.

We also visited a similar museum near the resort town of Bangor.  This museum was built on the grounds of a large summer estate originally owned by one of the local families.  They had gone to immense trouble to find old buildings representative of different types of Irish architecture and/or Irish culture and dismantle and move them to their current site.  They also had a reconstructed town, as well as a small Irish village, which still looks pretty much like most of the small Irish villages we drove through on our tour to the coast.

In addition, they had a couple of mills - one for grain and one for linen (still in the process of being refurbished).  The linen mill still shows the chalk marks from where they numbered EACH of the individual stones before moving the building to its current site.

They also had a reconstructed linen guard tower near the green.  There originally would have been two of these towers used to guard the recently spun linen yarns after they left the mill and were laid out on the grass to dry.  Particularly important since the grazing livestock of local residents would use the green to feed the animals, and the linen yarns would have been trampled.  The open grassy area also would have helped to bleach the linen in the sun.

And finally, before we left Bangor, we stopped in at their small "local culture" museum.  The town itself has grown up around a 12th century abbey, but before that also was home to Danish invaders, who used the port to land - and I'm sure they were frequent visitors for many decades in the area throughout the period.  Even though it is a small local museum, they have a great Viking exhibit, including some stone whorls they have unearthed and some small stones that have interlaced knot-style carvings on them.  The archeologists apparently unearthed lots of these samples in a trash pit - they used these little fragments as sort of practice slates for larger pieces, but I love the little doodles on them.  (You'll have to click on the picture to enlarge it enough to see them clearly.)

Next post - Giant's Causeway and Dunluce Castle on the north coast.

All for now.........

Belfast and Dublin

I think it is hard for those of us who haven't lived through a civil war (or any war, for that matter) to really appreciate what it must be like to live in a city under siege, or under the eye of military guards.  Belfast, however, has known all about this during the last century or so worth of "The Troubles".  Belfast is part of Northern Ireland, and therefore is associated with the greater UK union and is most closely aligned (politically as well as religiously, I suppose) with England.  Dublin, the major city in Ireland proper, has been attempting to maintain their national Irish heritage as an independent country (complete with separate government and maintaining a Catholic faith).  So, for instance, even though there has been peace across the north/south border for a decade or so, Belfast uses the pound Sterling as it's currency, while Dublin has moved to the Euro.  Most street signs in Dublin are in both English and Gaelic, and the city has a different "feel" to it.

Belfast, for all intents and purposes, really was a city in limbo for many years.  Certainly, tourism has only come recently to them.  I have to say, however, the city was VERY clean and they are working extremely hard at making things amenable to tourists (particularly since their ship-building has completely dried up, which was the foundation of the city's economy for many years).  There are still some vestiges left of The Troubles, like the Department of Justice building, which is still rimmed with barbed wire and a thick (bomb-proof?) concrete wall.

There are plans underway to restore this building and make it into a large cinema, believe it or not.  The closer you go to downtown, the more signs of restoration and growth you find.  The city still retains a lot of charm and the buildings they have already cleaned up are gorgeous, like the St. Anne's Cathedral.

Dublin, in contrast, is a much more bustling city - or at least it has that feel to it.  We took a bus down into the city, because our local sources had told us parking was virtually impossible.  We toured Trinity College, founded in the late sixteenth century, and stood in line to see the Book of Kells, which is absolutely stunning.  The colors are still absolutely pristine and vibrant, and even modern copying techniques don't really do the colors justice, in my opinion.  (No photos of those for security and conservation purposes - sorry!).

Here's the downtown government buildings along the river.

 

And the courtyard at Trinity. The large trees you see in the background are actually maples from the American northwest - a gift from the Lewis and Clark expedition.  There are five of them - the only five in the country, and they apparently are very happy in their location here.  The city has a very high water table (in fact, the library has an empty first floor with 15-foot high ceilings, built that way to counteract the wicking effect of the water up the stones - so as not to have the walls housing the books constantly wet), AND this grassy plot was an ancient cemetary.  Nothing like food and water to put some major growth on a plant.

Next post - some museum tours.

All for now.....

We are back....

from a wonderful vacation overseas.  We were able to fly out on Thursday as originally planned, although with the terrorist scare and us flying into the UK, we were forced to put everything except a wallet, my prescriptions and a book into checked luggage.  So, no knitting time at all on the flights, but I did get 2 books read on the way out.

We arrived in Belfast early Friday a.m. and toddled off to our hotel, jet-lagged and really needing a nap.  We took some time getting settled in and decided to take a walk to clear our heads and see where everything was from our hotel base.

D's conference was hosted by Queens University.  The campus is lovely - well taken care of and lots of Victorian architecture (as does most of Belfast).  The campus was only a short (less than 5-minute walk) from the hotel, so that made things really easy for D. 

Not too far from the university, we also found a great neighborhood pub, where we tapped into the first of many pub breaks on our stay - the guys all had a Guinness and I moved right on to the hard cider.  (Why does America not have draft cider on tap?  Why IS that?  It just doesn't make any sense to me.....)  After our pub break, we wandered back up the hill to the hotel, but decided to stop on the way and tour the Botanical Gardens, which are absolutely lush and pristine, even in August.

There are multiple smaller "focus" gardens within this large park.  They have one whole area with nothing but rose beds, centered around a stone arbor in the center which is overrun with early-season species.  The roses were coming to the end of their blooming season, but the "cottage garden" beds were in full swing.

And so ended our first day (which ended kinda early what with the lack of sleep), but more on Belfast and our tour to Dublin in a later post.  Thanks for all the well wishes for our safe trip!!

All for now...