Happy 42nd Anniversary to us. It's hard to believe that we've traveled this far together - both in years and in miles. It's been quite a journey.
We will be celebrating our birthdays in a few days, too, and this trip is quite a present. Last year, we were in Russia; this year, in Scotland and England.
Forty-two years ago, we only dreamed of days like this; and we were realistic enough to know that all dreams don't come true. We had only a few stated goals as we entered our marriage, and one of those goals was to travel the world a little bit.
Early on, when we were in aerospace making more money than our parents could understand, our friends were buying nice properties. We bought a small house and used the excess to buy a red Ford van. We built some plywood benches into the van that we could make into a bed, and away we went.
Our initial trips were composed of trips to see our families in West Virginia and Minnesota, and then we branched out to take side trips. We eventually started meeting my parents in places other than West Virginia and then taking off from there to places none of us had been. On and on it went, and we have since been in all but a few states, the Baja peninsula, and many parts of Canada, using our own wheels to get there.
What good does travel do? We're not sure that it has any grand purpose, but it's satisfied our desire to see what's on the other side of the mountain, plain, the river or the ocean; it's given us a greater understanding and appreciation of the cultures around us; it's provided challenges that have made us grow, both as married partners and as individual human beings. There's really no lasting value to travel in a grand sense, but the lasting value to us, with our short human lifespan, is immeasurable.
After 42 years, we have learned that marriage is more than that initial attraction that brings a couple together. It truly is a journey with as many rough spots as beautiful ones. We have been together 2/3 of our lives, and we have learned that each of us is the person with whom we would most want to argue and to love. Thinking about it boggles the mind. One wonders how this can happen - 42 years with the same person. Life is a mystery, and allowing it to be a mystery is perhaps one of the best things we can do.
We traveled a circle route today from Aberfeldy, south to Crieff on A826 and A822, west to Lochearnhead on A85, north to Killin, still on A85, and back east again to Aberfeldy on A827. We found the stones. They are on farm property, but we had limited access and got some pictures. I posted them on Flickr. Open the UK 08 collection and then the Aberfeldy set.
Crieff is a really nice town, and it seemed to be one of the largest towns we've visited (not counting those much larger ones we drove through or around, just out of necessity). We thought Pitlochry would be the largest (we visited there on Tuesday, coming back from Loch Ness), but our impression was that Crieff topped it.
Killen was about dead. A lot of the shops were open only a few hours in the morning, and there were very few people there. We went in one restaurant to see if we could get ice cream, but the had run out. Kenmore is a nice small town, with the beautiful lake side (Loch Tay) park where we ate our lunch on Sunday.
We will just hang around the resort tomorrow and relax, and then we'll head south on Friday. Beautiful country, this is!!! What a place to spend our anniversary.
As an afterthought, hat number 4 is about 2/3 done. It's burgandy and white.
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