| This was our first real day of hiking. We
got on the road about 9:30 in the morning, and arrived at the next B&B by
about 5:00... 7.5 hours of walking to cover 13 miles. We stopped up the
road from the B&B to buy sandwiches for the hike.
Overcast & cool... perfect for walking. |  |
| SHEEP! Even before we left town, there were
sheep!
Little did we realize how many we were going to see on this trip. |  |
| Still in town. |  |
| We approached the big lake in town, immediately
going off the road side, in favor of paths through the park. |  |
|  |
| Muckross Castle is a very active tourist spot,
with many live demonstrations and exhibits... none of which we saw. Our
focus at this stage was just to set a pace for ourselves, not knowing what
was ahead of us or how long it would take.
Another place to go visit if/when we go back to Ireland. |  |
|  |
| Cool Tree. Not at all sure of its backstory or
how old it is. |  |
| Here is as we approach the Torc Falls, a key
visitation point in the Muckross area. |  |
| This is nice, but honestly I couldn't figure out
what the big deal was. We saw numerous other waterfalls on our hike,
John's seen many others in the Adirondacks with Troop 14, and we both saw
more amazing things EVERYWHERE in Yosemite. |  |
|  |
| After the falls, we started climbing, and
climbing, and climbing some more. |  |
| And now, the hike really seems to begin. |  |
| Notice the distinctly different terrain. Rocky
mountain edges, no trees. |  |
| We were beside a river for a fair amount of this
part of the hike.
It's still not noon.
We'd only been hiking for a couple hours at this point. |  |
| Time for lunch, with the sandwiches be bought at
the gas station earlier. Interestingly (fortunately) there were very few
bugs!
You can see the path behind Tracy in the photo. |  |
|  |
| Cute couple. It's nice to have a camera that
can do timed shots.
How'd that old geezer get such a cute girlfriend? |  |
| Looking forward along our path. Weather still
overcast. |  |
|  |
| The sense of distance is starting to hit us. |  |
|  |
| Stone piles like this start to litter the
countryside. There's no telling on some of these how old they are. 50
years?
100?
150? |  |
|  |
| There were others still on our trail. If you
look at the photo, you can find a few ahead of us. If you look at the
upper right side of the photo, you can see how the path starts to make its
way through the countryside.
|  |
| Does this look like what you'd expect Ireland to
look like? It didn't to us. |  |
| Whoever tends to this Kerry Way does a nice job.
We found little foot bridges and such all along the way to make our path
easier to cover. Thanks! |  |
| Another family had already trekked out here ahead
of us to go splashing in the water at the bottom of these falls. A couple
were young ladies, which impressed us, since so much of the trail was
covered with prickly bushes, and they were wearing shorts.
If you notice in the photos, Tracy was still wearing her jacket. |  |
|  |
| We eventually made our way over to the edge of
these woods. |  |
|  |
| And then back out into hilly terrain again. |  |
| Although it's a path, it's a rocky one. Not
easy on the feet. |  |
| It's scenes like this that could have come
straight out of Lord of the Rings. You can almost imagine a troop of Orcs
coming around the hills.
No wonder there are so many legends in Ireland. Imagine being out
in this landscape at night with nothing but the stars to light your way. |  |
| Still some others on the trail, and still a long
way to go. A long way to go! |  |
|  |
| Another forest... mostly oak trees... completely
covered in moss. This picture doesn't do it justice. All the bumpy
stuff on the ground are old stone walls, completely consumed by moss. |  |
| An abandoned church greeted us of the short
period where we re-intersected a road. The first paved road we'd seen
since having left Kilarney. |  |
| And then, after another hour of walking, we
arrive at what we thought (hoped) was the B&B. No such luck.
No room for us at this inn.
We kept walking. |  |
|  |
| We had fun scaring the sheep away in this small
pasture.
At this stage, they sheep are still on "the other" side of the fence. |  |
| And FINALLY, the B&B. Hillcrest Farm house.
<whew> |  |
