We started our fourth day in search of Nessie from the ruins of the Urquhart Castle,
in the on-and-off rain. Then we took a little hike to see the
Divach Falls just south of town before taking off for a drive through
the highlands over to the western coast. Along the way we enjoyed
the scenery, stopped to admire the tremendous amount of runoff from the
recent rains, walked around Eilean Donan Castle
after hours and even crossed over to the Isle of Skye and drove
two-thirds of the way to Portree before deciding to turn around – with
a stop for tasty dinner and lovely seashore view at the Sconser Lodge
before heading all the way back to our hotel along Loch Ness.
We left Drumnaddrocht on the morning of our fifth day and drove up and
around Loch Ness through Inverness, heading for the Cairngorms National
Park and the town of Aviemore. We hiked up the ski resort
mountain of Cairngorm Mountain
as the weather entertained us by alternating from sun and clouds to
rain and high winds and back again. Darlene and Jane skipped out
on the hike back down and rode the funicular. (Or, as they might
say, Janie and I skipped out on the funicular and hiked back down!)
Our sixth day found us with a whole lot of miles to get back to Edinburgh but we did stop to visit the Highland Wildlife Park
and face off with some buffalo and reindeer, watch some tigers romp
about and displayed ourselves for the entertainment of the polar bears.
