First Three Days in Ireland

Our travel on May 5th got off to a rough start--we got up at 1:30 AM, out the door at 3:30, and onto the plane in Sacramento as scheduled.

Only to sit on the tarmack. Then the captain announced they were having a mechanical issue and everyone would be getting back off the plane. It was a race to be one of the first people to the ticket counter, to try to get another flight. We were probably about #30 in line, and it took us an hour to get to the front of the queue and be told that they could get us to Chicago, but no guarantees that we'd make our existing connecting flight.

Given the choice between staying overnight in an airport hotel in Chicago or our own bed, I voted for going back home and doing the entire thing all over again the next day. I went to bed at 5 PM that night (hubby didn't, which may be why I was ready to go in Ireland and he slept 18 hours straight of our first day there, ha) and was up at 1:30 on the 6th all over again.

And I discovered that airports are possibly the worse place in creation to try to eat with food allergies; fortunately, I'd come prepared with all kinds of bars to eat. I slept maybe 2 hours out of 24, but was mostly just bored. By the time we landed, I was feeling a bit queasy from hunger, so our first stop was kind of a blur. But thank goodness for pictures!

Bunratty Castle is quite near the Shannon airport so an easy way to kill some time since we couldn't check into our cottage in Kenmare (a few hours drive) until that afternoon. Bunratty has a folk museum, a collection of examples of cottages and homes taken from several counties, as well as a small village and pub. It rained on us off and on, but that's how we knew we were really in Ireland!

We arrived at our cottage that afternoon and so began the Great Sleep. It wasn't until late the next day that I was able to drag my husband out for a walk, and we discovered the neighborhood was full of newer holiday homes--but very tastefully done to blend in with old places like this one.

The next few days were spent shopping (groceries, yay!) and exploring the town. Love the paint on the buildings, and they even have an ancient stone circle outside of town.

And since we spent a fair amount of time in the cottage (had some really nasty storms in our time in Ireland), it's only fair to show you the view from Bar Cillatha (the holiday cottage we rented).

More to come from Ireland next week--if I don't get too bogged down with other projects, lol

Exmoor Ponies!

Be warned: the next several blog posts will be gushing accounts of our trip to Ireland and the UK!

I was a completely horse-crazy child (still am, but it's tempered with realities of being financially and emotionally responsible for a horse), so I was beyond excited to see Exmoor Ponies in their native habitat!

In fact, I was so excited that when we saw an entire herd of mares with brand new foals, I forgot to check my exposure in the camera. I think I've done that twice in my photographer's life! Those pictures came out overexposed, unfortunately, but with the magic of Photoshop I was able to salvage them somewhat.

The babies were so newborn that they were mostly sleeping--a rider on horseback spooked these mares enough that they rousted their babies and fled the field. There were about a dozen mares in this band--a few of them still hugely pregnant.

Earlier, we had stopped to take photos of an old church, and my husband called, "There's a horse up here with a baby." I thought he meant a regular horse, so took my time with photos in the graveyard. By the time I went up to the ridge, it was drizzling on the lone Mama Exmoor Pony and foal. She was doing her best to pretend that we weren't there, but otherwise wasn't too disturbed by our presence.

Her colt was eager to explore, but she kept calling him back if he got too far away. I think he's going to be a lively one!

More Photo Inspiration for Crow's Rest

Whenever we travel, it just makes me love where we live even more. Not because traveling is such a nightmare, but because we live in a place with beautiful vistas: rivers, lakes, mountains, rolling hills, quaint historic towns, and only a few hours from the Pacific coast.

Makes perfect sense that I would choose to set my WIP in a Sierra foothill town, albeit a made-up one. Crow's Rest is a thinly-veiled amalgam of several foothill towns, some of which can be surprisingly urbane. Not urban, mind you, which is part of their charm, but with fabulous restaurants and impressive locally grown wines.

One such town is now a state historic park, and I used to be a docent there about a decade ago. We went back recently and the pictures I took are the perfect subjects for a photo essay (click on each one to see it bigger):

An overview of the town nestled along the American River

Detail of the oak trees with their woolly fall coat of moss

One of the historic churches

A springhouse along the trail

 And my favorite foothill find--historic cemeteries!


Hope you enjoyed this vicarious trip!

RTW: I Need to Look at Something Besides This Blasted Monitor

Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival," where YA Highway's contributors and followers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on their blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

This week's topic: When you need creative inspiration, where do you go?

I'm going to answer in a photo essay:

Are you noticing a pattern? Not the watermark on all the photos, but the water in them. Even the moon-in-tree photo is on the cliffs at Salt Point. The last one was taken in my garden, though, and it's always good for inspiration.


Feel free to put a link to your post in the comments if you played along with Road Trip Wednesday. Don't forget to go to the YA Highway post and read all the answers!

RTW: Soul Retreat

Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival," where YA Highway's contributors and followers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on their blogs. You can hop from destination to destination through the YA Highway site and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

This week's topic: Describe your dream writing retreat. Where would you go? Who and what would you bring?

Wait, for a writing retreat, the idea is to go somewhere? But I wouldn't have my books, my kitties, my cozy rooms, my garden, the dusting, my gym bag full of stuff to be washed, the fox scat to scoop up again--oooooh, now I get the concept.

So far, I've never been able to do much writing away from home. Maybe a little poetry experimentation, but not any real work. Because, when we're in those gorgeous places away from home, we're on vacation! And although that means I'm squirreling away all these nuggets of experience into my memory, I rarely put pen to paper while we're traveling.

But if I had to choose, could I put one of these in my garden?



Okay, okay, if I was pried away from my homebase, I'd settle for one of these:



It's big enough for a small writing commune, but still with the potential for coziness! This next one looks like it'd be a little warmer in summer (for those of you who don't know, the California coast, as picture above, is pretty much socked in by fog and clouds for the summer months):



What about you? Where would your dream writing retreat take you? Don't forget to go to the comments on the YA Highway RTW post to see everyone else's answers!

What I Did Over Vacation

Missed my blog post yesterday because we'd just gotten back into town and I was busy catching up on things (what's that you say--I could have set up a post ahead of time to go up automatically? Did you catch the "vacation" part?). So here is a photo essay catching you up on the places we went and things we saw:

We stayed in the hills above Pillar Point Harbor (near Half Moon Bay, CA)



Used the rental cottage as a base and went into San Francisco for day trips, including sights like the Maritime Museum at Fisherman's Wharf



and the Japanese Tea Garden



and the Conservatory of Flowers



along with a side trip to the Filoli estate (this is just the garden room, and I totally want one)



Went lots of other places, but I didn't want to turn this into a captive blog audience vacation slideshow. Hopefully this little taste is enough to inspire you in your writing somehow--I know it did for me!

A Tourist in Your Own Town

My current work-in-progress is set in a fictional small town in California's Gold Country (fictional because it's an amalgamation of several towns) called Crow's Rest. So to help me establish the details and the atmosphere, my husband and I set out for a drive to some nearby Gold Rush-era towns last weekend.

Camera in hand, we visited some spots that the locals know about, like this historic cemetery:



where I found the perfect character name:



There's an interesting dichotomy, in that the locals are sometimes unaware of the nearby treasures. I used to be a docent at a historic park and the highway runs right through the middle of it; I'd have people tell me, "I've lived in the area for years and I never stopped to see what was here until now." Usually they were there with their child's fourth grade class, as a required field trip for California history.

As a historical fiction writer, one of my favorite places is a real snapshot of history in Sutter Creek: when the owner of a general store passed away in the 1950s, she left the store and its contents to the city, to be used as a museum or library. It's now a museum, with goods from the 1890s all the way through the mid-20th century, but it's rarely open because they don't have enough volunteers to staff it. My husband and I lucked out and got to go inside one afternoon, and I could have spent hours in there.

And yet, people that have lived in the area for years have no idea that it's there. I kind of like the feeling of it being a bit secret, but it's a shame that it doesn't get more attention. You know who usually knows about these kinds of places, though? It's the local kids. How great is it to grow up in a place where ruins and old mines are literally in your backyard?



What about you--have you recycled bits of your locale or hometown into your writing?

Bryce Bonanza

As promised, here are a few pictures from our Bryce trip. Storms made for fantastic clouds. There are a few more in my scenics gallery.