Day 19, With A Little About Day 17
I am going to say a little about Saturday (day 17), because it was a interesting day. We were up and out the door by 5:45am and started the long 2 1/2 hour drive to Skellig Michael. When we were about 30 mins away form where we were to get on the boat we called to see if they were still planing on going out for the day. But unfortunately they said it was too windy to dock out at the island to let people disembark. We then had to turn around and drive 2 hours back. The place where we stopped to call had a small grocery store and a little shop with many different things to look at. In the little shop Jack saw an Irish Feadóg (traditional Irish whistle) that he thought he would enjoy. He then bought it as his souvenir from Ireland.
Day 19 Dad stayed home to work, while Mom took Jack, Bria, Landon, and I to see The Cliffs of Moher. It was about a 2 hour drive from where we were staying at Ballyhoura Mountain Lodge. After getting our tickets we walked toward the cliffs. It was windy and a little cool. The cliffs were amazing with their 400 to 700 foot drop! The water crashing against the rocks below was mesmerizing to watch. At one end of the cliffs, there was a tower, O’Brian’s Tower, that you could see the cliffs from their highest height. We went up, because it was going to be the only chance we had to go up. It was twice as windy up there and crowded with people.
After coming back down from the tower, we started walking to the other end to see the tower way out on the farthest point; not knowing at all how far out it was. Mom, Bria, and I wanted to go see the tower at the other end the cliffs. It did not look like it was that far away from back at the start; but, as we started walking it just felt like it kept getting farther and farther away as we walked. At one place, still close to the beginning, there were hills of rocks that were fun to climb on. Landon asked Mom to take a picture of him jumping in the air. She got a good one of that. As we went along, we found a spring, and an area that had many, many piles of rocks, mini cairns. It was really interesting how it was all done. Bria added a pile to the area of rocks.
There were two walking paths with a wall dividing them, the ‘inside’ walking path, recommended, was for people who did not feel comfortable walking so close to the edge. On the right side towards the cliff, you could walk right on the edge. It was your own choice if you wanted to walk out in “daredevil” land or not. Mom could not stand us walking out on the cliff side of the wall so she made us walk on the safe side. People were crazy, they were sitting with their legs hanging over the edge! There were a lot of young adults out there. No wonder about a dozen people fall to their death there every year.
After a while Jack and Landon were complaining how much their legs hurt and that they did not want to go any farther. Mom told them they could wait at a large rock until we got back. When we finally arrived out at the other end, we were extremely disappointed with the tower out there. The roof had fallen in and the sides had many holes in, overall it was a very uninteresting structure. After looking around for about 5 mins, we turned around and headed back to the boys and then the car. We were all very exhausted after that, and were glad to get back to the car and head 2 hours back to the lodge to eat dinner and see Dad.
