More fun in Scotland

Since leaving Edinburgh, we've continued to drive on the wrong side of the road through the beautiful countryside. Amazingly, Garrett only attempted to drive on the right once! What was even more fun was driving on roads that are only wide enough for one car, but with traffic going in both directions! Whew! That was NOT fun.

Our first stop out of Edinburgh was at Falkirk Wheel, a simple yet elegant engineering marvel that lifts boats from one canal to another, over 114 feet of elevation. They told us that the energy required to move the wheel was equivalent to 8 toasters! Thanks to Archimedes, the wheel can handle any size boat (because if you put in a 1 ton boat, 1 ton of water is displaced). Very cool.

Next we headed to the little town of Dunkeld on the River Tay. Unlike Trevor, we did not go whitewater rafting, but the current was definitely strong enough. We visited Dunkeld because I had heard about a pub there, the Taybank Hotel, that is called "the musical meeting place of Scotland." Since we were there on a Monday, there were traditional wool spinners in addition to musicians. The music was great, consisting of whistles, flutes, border and elbow pipes (sort of like bagpipes but powered by bellows rather than breath), fiddle, guitars, some singing, and alot of foot stomping. Almost all of the clientele (with the exception of us) seemed to be locals, and they were all super friendly. In the morning, we took a long, leisurely and beautiful walk along the river and then visited the ruins of the Dunkeld cathedral, which dates from the 1400s.

Back on the road, we drove through Boat of Garten and then stayed at Grantown on Spey. In the morning, we went to the Osprey reserve, which is along Loch Garten. Unfortunately, the breeding pair of ospreys, EJ and Henry, had already left for Africa without producing any hatchlings. But we did catch a glimpse of what appeared to be an Osprey, and the setting was quite lovely.

Now we are in Inverness, waiting for another hour or so for the Norway-Scotland world cup football game to start. We figured it would be fun to sit in a pub with a bunch of crazy Scots and watch the game. Tomorrow, onto Loch Ness and possibly all the way to Glasgow.

It's all been fun but exhausting... and expensive. If you think gas is expensive in the states, we filled up our little Ford Focus with 42 liters of gas (about 10 gallons) and it cost 40 pounds... about $80. With the dollar so weak, everything here is extremely expensive, so we won't be bringing back any of those beautiful Shetland or cashmere sweaters (for a mere $500).

One more thing... it's been really interesting to see the headlines in the papers here. Most of the Katrina converage has consisted of Bush bashing, with occasional stories of Brits who were stuck in New Orleans. But when you meet someone on the street and they hear you're from the United States, the first topic of conversation is the Katrina tragedy.

Finding internet access has been more difficult than we had anticipated, but we'll try to post more soon. Meanwhile, we HAVE been checking our e-mail, but have not heard from anyone, so please let us know what's going on.