Kentucky Cousins?

As promised I am dropping in to post some pictures from my recent trip up into the Highlands of Scotland. These are just a few of the pics, a peek into the trip, but if you would like to see more pop over to my Facebook. I am not actually sure what the best way to go about this is as we visited SO MANY places! I think I am just going to go for it by picture and hopefully that will put us in some kind of order!

Day 1- Loch Ness

Our first stop was the small town of Dunkeld to see a cathedral!

After a quick stop there we hit the road again and stopped for a few pictures here and there along the way including some in on of two National Parks in Scotland, this was Cairngorm...

After a few more stops in places on the loop up north we arrived at the bottom of Loch Ness in Fort Augustus (I will just add that there is a ton of history revolving around everywhere we stopped; mostly to do with the picts and other Scots fighting the Jacobites)

Upon our continued journey north we hit up a castle, passed through Inverness, then stopped at an ancient stone burial ground (but the main attraction for me was the Hogwarts Express Bridge over yonder!)

Finally, to end our journey on the way back we made another stop in Aviemore which is the ski town in the Cairngorms here in Scotland. (Fun fact: there are areas of mountains (Bens) in Scotland that have the same climate of the frozen tundra!)

I am not going to say "that was it" for day one because it was actually an eight hour trip and I actually cannot believe how much ground we covered! 

Day Two- Highlands and Whisky Distillery (which I forgot to take a picture of...)

First up we have the Fourth of Fife bridge, some odd "scottish sea creatures" that just look like horses to me, and the Wallace Monument.

I proceeded to take some pictures as we drove though Trossachs National Park before making it to Famous Grouse Distillery

We stopped in a few small cattle towns that lie between a lot of farm land which reminded me so much of home...as did the Scotch! (I am fairly certain Kentucky shares a common bloodline with Scotland!) After the distillery we had a few extra minutes and made a stop to take a wee walk through the woods to see a waterfall. 

Apparently this waterfall normally looks like a small creek with a nice lagoon at the bottom, but because Scotland is basically flooding right now, we go to see it much larger, not to mention the forest was covered in the site of my favorite flowers, lilies of the valley! After the short hike it was back on the bus, another stop back in Dunkeld followed by our arrival back in St. A's. Day two was quite a bit shorter, but I think I liked it better as I thoroughly enjoyed the countryside!

This brings us to the end of the peek into this beautiful area of the world God has me right now, but I assure you I will be checking back in pretty soon, but with a completely different topic!