Road tripping

For this road trip I'm glad I'm not the one driving.  In Ireland you drive on the left hand side of the road.  The cars are also right hand drive, with the driver on the right.  Standard transmissions are the norm here so that means that you are shifting with your left hand.  Opposite side of the road, opposite side of the car, with the other hand.  It can really throw you off since years of driving experience and intuition have to be overcome.  John is doing a great job with it.  After a few days you get used to it and get a sense of where the car corners and edges are.  Rear view back up cameras help.

County Donegal - Not all of the roads are tiny

The size of the roads also makes driving a bit tricky.  I am used to the big open spaces and straight smooth roads and freeways of the American West.  Even in California the roads and side roads are wide enough for our monstrously big American cars.  Here, not so much.  Many of the roads we followed turned into single lane roads, not one lane in each direction, but one lane with no markings and minimal to no shoulder and a decided rollercoaster effect.  If you see an oncoming car it is a bit of a game of chicken to see who will find a wide spot to move over.  There is often a stone wall or hedgerow close to the road so it isn't like you can just scoot off to the side a bit.  Not only are the roads small, but the speed limits feel fast for the size of the road.  It's all a bit dodgy.  It's not just the country lanes.  The roads in the little villages were built long before cars were invented to they can be narrow even for the small European cars.  It can be quite picturesque, but I'm glad it's not me driving.

On the way back from Deel Castle

One other thing that throws me off is the difference in the time and distance traveled.  Earlier this summer I drove nearly 800 miles in one very long 12+ hour day from California to Utah.  Add another 300 (in 6 hours thanks to dirt roads) to go up to Wyoming for camp then home again the long way through St George (an extra 180 miles) and you get a lot of hours and a lot of miles.  Here the distances are shorter, and it still takes awhile to get where you are going because overall speeds are slower than on American freeways, but you can still get from east coast to west coast in less than 4 hours.

Downpatrick head in the distance

Stopped for road construction just outside Killala

No road trip would be complete without a sound track.  We listened to My Boy's Spotify lists but also listened to the local radio.  We found Ocean FM out of Sligo.  We thoroughly enjoyed listening to the music and the local news.  It is a different mix of music than we are used to.  In the US each station has its very narrow niche of listeners.  This was much more of a mixed bag and we loved it.

One song that surprised us was the Show band cover of ABBA's Hasta Manana.  It's ABBA meets Lawrence Welk.  It's awseome in it's own way and it has become our theme song for the trip.  The showbands of the 50s-70s toured the country playing covers of popular music and their own songs in dance halls and little clubs around the country.

We listened through the country music hour.  You can definitely hear the connection between Country music in the US and Ireland.  In the US country and bluegrass evolved from the music of the Scottish and Irish people living in Appalachia.

This father daughter duo is American, but we heard it on the radio and had a good laugh.

We didn't get to drive through Omagh, but came close.

Another day on a different station we heard an interview with Andy Bell from Erasure.  It's a bit of everything.

It's been a great trip so far.  We spend time seeing and doing, but also take plenty of down time during the rain where the kids get their YouTube fix and work on finishing up their summer reading and school work.  I really like our slow pace of travel for this trip.