Driving to Kemare - Drombeg Stone Circle and Priests Leap Pass 9/7/09

What a day and what an adventure thanks to our GPS. But let me back up. The wonderful pleasure of staying in a B&B, is the people you meet when you are having breakfast in the morning. This morning, we met a couple from North Carolina and a young girl, traveling by herself, also from North Carolina but living in Baltimore. Talking amongst each other over a full Irish breakfast, Irish oats and pots of tea, we found the couple was taking the same route as us and the young lady was going in the opposite direction. All of us checked out at the same time and as we jumped into our respective cars, the couple challenged us to a race to Kenmare. We laughed and I said," you're on". Of course, I wasn't expecting a competition as we needed to make a few stops in Kinsale before heading out. We drove along the coast ~ Fletch stopping at every stone bridge, cove with boats and seagulls, or crumbling structure, for a frantic picture taking session. We finally arrived at our first stop along the way to Kenmare, Drombeg Stone Circle. Dating back to 150 B.C., this stone circle, in a grassy knoll surrounded by wild berries and fuchsias, seemed like a miniature to the likes of Stonehenge. But it was a curiosity because of it's age. We thought we would meet up with the couple from the B&B but we did not see them until they went whizzing by, honking and waving as Fletch had stopped to take more pictures further up the road from Drombeg. A half an hour later, we passed them as they went in one direction and our GPS told us to go another. My thought, as I saw them drive on another road away from us went like this, "boy, they're going to get lost". Boy, was I ever wrong. As our GPS instructed us to go on an unnamed road, I grew suspicious as the houses fell away and our two way road became a one way road and our view consisted of hills, then mountains of heather and yellow flowers and sheep who looked at us as if they had never seen a human or a car before. We didn't know whether to laugh of cry. We didn't know if we were lost or someone at TomTom had played a cruel joke on us. We finally began to relax when we realize, we were the only people on this mountainous pass and we should consider it a gift. My concern was the car breaking down ... well, we would survive. We had licorice and wine in the trunk and tons of warm clothing. As we came down the pass, we finally saw another car whose driver also looked like a puzzled tourist... probably someone with a TomTom. Now, we are sitting pretty in our room in Kenmare at the Lansdowne Arms Hotel. We walked around town this afternoon and talked to some of the locals. We discovered we had gone through the Priests Leap Pass. One local girl exclaimed that the GPS was infamous for sending unsuspecting drivers on isolated roads here in Ireland. Actually, we heard quite a few stories today much like ours. We still look at it as a gift. Our B&B competitors may have made it to Kenmare WAY before we did but we had one amazing, beautiful, wild Irish drive today. Cheers for now.