Day 4

Yet another amazing day.  We headed straight to Loch Ness for a boat tour to find the Loch Ness Monster "Nessie."  On our boat ride we found out a lot of amazing things.  For example, if you were to empty the Loch Ness, you could fit the population of the world in- 3 times!  With elbow room!  

The Loch is shaped like a bath tub, steep sides and a flat bottom.  We pulled close to the shore and about 25 feet out, we were 200 feet deep according to the sonar!  The water was about 40 degrees Fahrenheit and filled with peat so the visibility is very bad.  

Apparently there have been hundreds of Nessie sightings.  Most of those sightings are said to take place during the early morning or evening.  Our boat captain, George Edwards, struck me as a wee bit crazy  He told us that he had personally seen Nessie a couple times in his life.  He insisted that there wasn't just "A" Nessie but many relatively unknown sea creatures.  Like I said, a wee crazy...

While riding around on the boat my grandpa of course made friends with an American woman from South Carolina.  The woman said, "Oooohhh, you went to the Citadel?" as she batted her eye lashes and smiled, "The girls at our school loved the Citadel boys..."  So my grandpa is suddenly very charming and says, "Ohhh, you went to that girls school?  Well we only dated those girls..."  They chatted the whole way on the shuttle while my grandma and I sat on the bus behind them and laughed.  He thinks he's soooo charming... 

Our next stop was the Corrimony Cairn which was a mound of rocks that was meant to be a big burial sight.  It was built about 4 thousand years ago they say... 

Another place we stopped at was Dog Falls.  That was one of my favorite places we've been so far.  I loved being out in the fresh air and watching the water run by.  I really wish I could have stayed there longer.  Along the way, we saw toadstools!  How cool is that?  Real poisonous fungus!  (Yep, I'm a city girl)

As we were wandering around the path, I heard my grandpa coughing a bit... then spitting... thing grabbing his throat.  I asked him if he was ok and he said, "Ew yuck!  I think I swallowed a bug!"  After laughing and making fun of him, I offered him some water to wash down his bug.  Haha!

Our driver Vince is awesome.  He knows all about Scotland and it's historic places.  He did a great job of getting to know our interests.  He would stop and point out golf related things to my grandpa, show my grandma little details in cathedrals, and show me different fields that I could frolic in.  On this day he drove us to a random gate on the side of the road and told us it was a surprise.  It led to a wee graveyard that had some of our ancestors.  I thought that was very nice of him.  I would have never known to pull of at the place he did and wander to find a random graveyard of 10 people.  Very cool.  

The last place Vince took us to was a town that had famous golfing stuff and the church where Madonna got married.  

Scotland is seriously one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen and we took some pictures in the mountains covered in heather.  Of course... I had to do my frolicking thing... haha!  

That night we went to a great little restaurant called Cafe 1.  I had some great savoury crepes... mmm... have I mentioned that I eat a lot of food here?  My grandparents seem to bring it up a lot anyways... haha...