Healing Travels: 40 Days for Peace: Finally Skye: day 22

5 July

Perfect English Breakfast from Winnie: beans, tomatoes, bangers, bacon, egg, toast and tea. Alexander picked us up with our Ford Fiesta on his truck. Drove to Inverness and he filled us in on all of the scoop about Scotland handing over their freedom in the last election. He is a real Scotsman and says he always scratches out English on any form he fills out and writes in...SCOTTISH! He was very passionate about Scotland and didn't care too much for the English trying to change their way of life. We listened to him talk the 1 hourdrive to Inverness and enjoyed every minute. He talked about his three children and the youngest daughter matched Mackenzie's personality perfectly...another actress in the making!

A Kia was our next car and I owed 70 pounds for the tire on the first...or American Express' Auto Insurance Rental Coverage does. Off we went to the Isle of Skye! We sang the theme from Outlander, 'The Skye Boat Song' over and over as well as listened to the Glengarry Boys, Scottish Mayhem, The Jeff Greer Band, Coinneach, and Seven Nations as we drove through lovely Scotland and over the bridge to Skye...yep, we love bagpipes!

Sing me a song of a lass that is gone
Say, could that lass be I?
Merry of soul she sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye

Billow and breeze, islands and seas
Mountains of rain and sun
All that was good, all that was fair
All that was me is gone

Sing me a song of a lass that is gone
Say, could that lass be I?
Merry of soul she sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye

We drove winding, mostly single track roads with tiny places here and there to pull over when another car approached. Any and all signage was in English and in Gaelic and we tried to pronounce them all! We hiked The Old Man of Storr, a large pinnacle of rock that stands high to be seen from miles around and is part of the Trotternish Ridge. It was more of a walk up than we had thought and of course we had to climb higher than most...but it was magical! Back in the car to see another sight, The Kilted Rocks and then off to find a place to stay.

Driving north we only found sheep...lots and lots of sheep. Mackenzie wants so badly to pet one, but everytime we stopped they would runaway like we were going to eat them or something! We decided to go back into Port Righ (pronounced Portree..no joke!) which meant we had to backtrack and every B&B had no vacancies signs out until my crazy, tuned-in daughter said, "Go down that street!" Yep, we'd been praying again and even though House No. 1-4 and House No. 6-8 (as they were called) had 'No Vacancies' signs up, House #5 had a Vacancy sign out!

Mackenzie jumped out of the car and spoke with Mrs. Boyd as was on the sign and Mrs. Boyd happened to have a cancellation so we got the twin beds in her house! She wanted Mackenzie to look at the room to see if it was okay...OKAY?! Heck, yeah! it was clean and we had our own bathroom!

We headed out for dinner and walked about 10 minutes into town. We had a hard time deciding on where to eat, but we ate at 'The Granary' that was located right in the town square and feasted on Scottish burgers with brie cheese and bacon and then felt horrible because we had just seen such beautiful cows! Oh well, at least we got our protein! We drank a fabulous local red ale and a sweet gold ale made at the only brewery on Skye #IsleofSkyeBrewingCo. #RedLegBrewery you've got competition! Walked back and fell into bed because we were going to see all of Skye tomorrow. Sing me a song of a lass that is gone..

Tip of the Day: Don't think about the lovely brown cows you saw during the day while you eat your juicy burger at night...