Monday, August 07, 2006

Day 8--The Burren

Our final day in Ireland seemed more like two or three days, this was the part that we both really wanted to see, and even without my normal lens I was still excited to photograph it. We woke to rain and fog. After talking to the lady at our B&B, we decided that we would head out to The Burren, which is described as a barren sandstone wasteland with a lunar landscape. I dont know what pictures these people have been looking at, but it looks nothing like the moon, and if you are from the southwest, or have ever been to Utah , you know barren, this is lush! With the rain and our choices being a lunar landscape or 200 ft cliffs with a goat path, we chose the moon. Anyway, we took off expecting to enter some odd, foreign place, but no, it is just Ireland with more rocks. Dont get me wrong, it was beautiful, and the sandstone is very impressive, but lunar is not what I would think of. It is pretty much all rock, I think it would be quite an uninhabitable place, but I guess not. There were still sheep and cows, just a lot more rocks. We drove through it thinking we must be getting close and looking at the map trying to figure out where we were since we assumed we had not actually been enter The Burren since there was grass and flowers all over the place, but we had. We realized that when we came upon three tour buses all parked on one of these crazy small roads, and the cars were parked down the road in front and in back of them. We decided we didnt care to see the Poulnabrone Dolmen that much and that we would come back later and see if the tourist and rain were gone. We went past it and come to an old fort kind of like the Hill of Tara, but it was on private property, and they were definitely charging a lot to see it. We pulled in and I was too scared to take a picture because I thought I would get yelled at again, so we just left. There were a lot of people coming out of the place who seemed disgruntled too, so it wasnt just us. We went to the town of Carron (mind you these towns are like 10 miles apart) because we had read about a good place to eat. Carron being pronounced k-air-n. On the way I saw a sign for a Cairn, also pronounced K-air-n, as Devin saw the sign for Carron, which pointed the other way. I said I wanted to see the Cairn and Devin said he was trying to get us there. After a confusing few minutes we figured out what had happened and headed up to the Cairn. It was pretty neat. A little bit of a walk from a very small windy road, but overall it was lovely. After that we headed down to Carron and ate there, it was really good, except I forgot to specify no mayo. Even with the mayo it was good. We then headed back to the Poulnabrone Dolmen whose stone date back to 2500BC. It is a small cairn with a large Dolmen on top. They excavated about thirty people (men, women and children) from it in the seventies. I was really looking forward to this. It is neat, but is one of the few things I have ever encountered that looked better on film than in real life. So, it is the most photographed rock in Ireland , but not because it is so great, but because it photographs really well. The tourists had left and we were almost alone. It was very nice. About this time my obsession with Irish cows was its strongest. I know this sounds very odd, but their cows are better than ours. Ours are usually all one color, and generally it is a chestnut color. Their cows are chocolate brown and spotted, like the milkshake cow on Carls Jr. commercial. I love these cows and photographed them everywhere. Come on, you all already know I am a little odd.

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