I am half Irish, but I had never been to Ireland. My mother told me that her parents were Michael Kilbane and Bridget McCann Kilbane, and that they immigrated to the US from Ireland, I think early in the twentieth century. More specifically, they came from Achill Island on the northwest coast of Ireland in […]
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I have always liked architecture, so taking pictures of interesting buildings is a natural for me. This is the Kilkenny Castle, in the rain, but with the sun at our backs. The stone building is the Kilkenny Tourist Information Centre, built in 1582 by benefactor Sir Richard Shee to house poor people. There are a lot
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In Ireland, they drive on the left-hand side of the road. We had lived in Cambridge England for two years in the 1980s, so I knew how to drive on the left. Shifting a manual transmission with your left hand significantly increases the Degree of Difficulty quite significantly. But it has been thirty-some years since England, and I have
I am half Irish, but I have never been to Ireland until recently. We went to Ireland at the end of May for 2 and a half weeks, and we had a splendid time. It is a gorgeous country, with amazing, friendly people. And we had sunshine and warm weather throughout the trip! NOT –
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We drove from San Luis Obispo to Snow Canyon State Park, near St George, Utah. I had read really good things about this park online, but WOW, it is really amazing. BTW, the name comes from the Snow family, not the weather. Our first night it rained like crazy. We were very glad we were not
After Jalama Beach, our plan was to go to visit Emily and BK who live in San Luis Obispo. Emily is a psychologist, and for many years Emily and Susan shared an office in SLC. Before the trip we knew that Emily and BK lived on Marsh Street in downtown San Luis Obispo, and there was no way we
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My sister Michele and her husband Michael organized a family gathering at the beginning of May in California, at the Jalama Beach county park campground. Susan and I brought our Oliver travel trailer, as my sister Margie and her husband brought their Casita trailer, while the rest of the family stayed in cabins. Michael’s family came, his
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City of Rocks is a National Reserve in southern Idaho run by the National Park service. The name comes from the wagon trains of emigrants in the 1840s and 1850s on their way to California. They described the rocks here in vivid detail as “a city of tall spires,” “steeple rocks,” and “the silent city.”
We took a spring trip to Moab the last week in March. There are a series of primitive BLM campgrounds along the Colorado River, near Moab. I say primitive because there are no hookups and no water; they provide a firepit, a picnic table, and pit toilets. They do not take reservations, and are first
On our way back from San Diego we spent the night in Twenty Nine Palms, CA, so that we could visit Joshua Tree National Park. When planning our trip, we weren’t sure we would be able to visit, because of the government shutdown; Joshua tree was one of the parks that suffered damage during the
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