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Back and Forth Across the Pond

My English hubby and I moved to the Scottish Highlands in June 2016 after over seventeen years in my home state of Florida. As a result, the posts have become Scotland heavy. Which is great because Scotland is stunningly beautiful. However, we do like to travel and I do visit my family and friends back in the States, so you can never be sure what's going to crop up next.

It's Official

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- June 14, 2016

I take a break from posting photo blogs to announce that my visa has arrived, and we have booked our plane tickets to Scotland. We leave for the next chapter of our lives on June 28.

Wow. Just . . . wow.

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Inverewe Gardens

- August 31, 2017

We stopped at Inverewe Gardens on our way home at the recommendation of one of Steve's work mates. It's a property within The National Trust for Scotland, so admission is free to Trust members. We had been pondering joining since we first moved here and decided to just bite the bullet and sign up whilst we were at the gardens. We only have to visit about four more places to have the membership pay for itself. Since the Culloden Battlefield near us in Inverness is part of the Trust, and our membership also grants us access to England's National Trust locations, we figure our membership will end up saving us quite a bit within the year. Inverewe Gardens was once the estate of Osgood Mackenzie. He built his mansion house on a rocky promontory overlooking Loch Ewe in the mid-19th century. He dreamed of having a walled garden of flowers and vegetables and set about excavating a raised beach and building retaining walls and terraces. By 1870, Osgood had created a productive gar...

An Overnight Trip to the Isle of Skye

- January 09, 2017

Steve took a couple of days off when I returned from my three weeks in The States. We used the extra time to take an overnight trip to the Isle of Skye. Skye has been on my bucket list for awhile, so I was quite excited to finally get there. The weather forecast called for rain for the entire trip. Luckily, the forecast was wrong (as it so often is around here) and the rain never interfered with our activities. Our route took us by Loch Carron. You can't tell from these photos, but Loch Carron is a sea loch. I want to say it dumps into the Atlantic Ocean, but I am unsure if the span of water between the Isle of Skye and the Scottish mainland has its own name. This is the tiny village of North Strome on the other side of the loch. I think the sepia filter gives this view of Loch Carron an interesting quality. A zoomed-in view of North Strome on the other side of the loch. The large building in the foreground is Strome Castle (I think). I didn't know it...

El Yunque National Forest

- June 07, 2016

Driving in Puerto Rico is a nightmare. Nowhere is the concept of island time more apparent than on the roads and highways around the island. Unlike the States, where the vast majority of people view a speed limit as the minimum rate of travel, Puerto Ricans take the velocidad maxima as gospel. It is the maximum speed allowed and most drivers stay well below it to be sure. That means you'll get a lot of drivers across all the lanes of the highway doing between 45 and 60 on a road with a speed limit of 65. Thus the trip to San Juan from Aguadilla takes a couple of hours even though the straight-line distance is only something like 75 miles. So when we decided to visit El Yunque and Old San Juan, which are both located on the eastern end of the island, we bundled them together into a full day of sightseeing. El Yunque National Forest is the only tropical rain forest in the National Forest System. Even though it's only about 29,000 acres in size, putting it on the lower end of t...