Dale King studied the scriptures every morning of his life since his college days. He also loved reading the seventeenth-century English Puritans. A favorite, Richard Baxter said about death:

“If a man that is desperately sick today, did believe he should arise sound the next morning; or a man today in desperate poverty, had he assurance that he should tomorrow arise a prince: would they be afraid to go to bed?”

He loved reading Spurgeon, the magnificent Victorian pastor, who admonished:

“Never fear dying, beloved. Dying is the last, but the least, matter that a Christian has to be anxious about. Fear living… that is a hard battle to fight, a stern discipline to endure, a rough voyage to undergo.”

“A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and helped you will be remembered when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.”

He loved the seventeenth- century British poets. His favorite, George Herbert, said:

“Only a sweet and virtuous soul,/ Like seasoned timber never gives./ But though the whole world turn to coal,/Then chiefly lives.”

John Donne, another seventeenth-century poet thundered:

“Death be not proud, though some have called thee/ Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so…./ Death shall be no more ; death, thou shalt die.”

So. Why all the quotations? My heart is so broken that I cannot do this. Words….Words….Words!So inappropriate a medium for measuring immeasurable grief and loss. Forgive me. I must borrow language. I must borrow from the Apostle John who, under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, resorted to outrageous understatement in rehearsing the untimely loss of a beloved and respected colleague:

“There was a man sent from God whose name was John [the Baptist]. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light.”

In my life, and in the life of thousands of other students spanning the globe for over six decades: “There was a man sent from God whose name was Dale….” He, too, in the sovereignty of God, from before the foundations of the world, was sent to bear witness of Christ, the Light.

One of the best days of my life was an early fall morning in 1975 when I sheepishly stepped into Dale King’s Victorian literature class. A man with sparkling, dancing eyes; a robust beard; a winsome smile; a zest for life and literature. And—for the first time in my life—I thought I must have encountered a saint with the gift of glossolalia! He spoke in another tongue—the tongue of angels?— and with the voice of God. I was at the burning bush: I spent my first hour as a liberal arts undergraduate desperately trying to write in a notebook—phonetically—each polysyllabic nugget that dropped from his lips.

He kept me after-class that day. I was terrified that he was going to tell me that liberal arts education was reserved for scholars, not back-woods, ignorant hicks such as I. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and thanked me—with grace, charm, and elàn—for transferring to Malone from a nondescript, non-accredited Bible institute, and for picking up on the biblical allusions from his selection of Victorian essays for that first day. While wooing me in that sonorous Dale-King tone, he tipped too far in his chair, fell backward into a deft backward roll that any accomplished gymnast would have had to respect, picked himself up, returned to his chair, and, all the while, kept right on talking—didn’t miss a beat.

I fell in love. Hopelessly. Irrevocably. Soul-mates. Forever. My years at Malone, both as a student and, later, as a professor, were rich times, indeed: a few moments to rub shoulders with remarkable mentors in the Kingdom of Christ: Bob and Zovinar Lair, Burley Smith, John Bricker, Coach Bob Starcher, Carlene King.  Never, however, had I met another man like Dale.

The poet, J. Frederick Nims, in “Love Poem” attempts to capture the essence of such a beloved one. Nims admits that his wife is “his clumsiest dear,” one who is “a wrench in clocks and the solar system;” that is to say, she is someone who is clearly not a candidate to host a home-repair show.

Neither was Dale. He was not the one to set the timing on your carburetor or to trim back the giant oak tree towering over your house.  In the words of Nims, he had “no cunning” in fix-it situations, EXCEPT:

“Except all ill-at-ease figiting people.

The refugee uncertain at the door,/You make at home.

Deftly you steady the [broken, the reeling] on his undulant floor….

….Only/with words and people and love you move at ease

In traffic of wit expertly Maneuver/and keep us/all devotion at your knees….”

When I met Dale, I was hopeless. Raised in the shadows of the soot- belching smokestacks of Plant two of the Firestone factory in Akron, imagination was the only resource I had. It was the only escape one had from a world that seemed to have little opportunity, when all one ever saw was what was outside the front door. By high-school graduation, hope had been beaten out of me. I was broke, and I was broken. Ill-at-ease. Suicidal. God used Dale and Carlene to save my life, and to give me one. Dale tried his best to teach me literature but—far more than that—he gave me hope. (The apostle Paul insists in the conclusion of his letter to the Romans that we are saved by hope.) In the wonderful film Saving Mr. Banks, Walt Disney echoes the primacy of hope in a remonstrance to Pamela Travers, the author of Mary Poppins:

“That’s what we story-tellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again, and again, and again.”

What Dale did for me is redolent of a scene in Wendell Berry’s magnificent tale “Nearly to Fair,” in his book That Distant Land. In this story, a kind, gentle man comes across a small boy who has just been verbally abused (a staple in this child’s life) and left sobbing and cowering on the sidewalk. Dale, like the man in the story, looked at me in all my cowering, shivering, craven fear—looked into my bankrupt heart and announced to the whole world: “If you don’t mind, I’m going to borrow this boy for a while.” He picked me up, nestled me into his capacious heart—and he loved me.

More than my teacher, more than my dear friend, more than my most-loved colleague – he was my dad. To Dale, and the love of Christ that emanated from him, I owe everything. I would not have survived without him. Scores of his students surely must echo that same sentiment.

His crowning achievement, however, is that of winning the heart of his dear wife Carlene: She was my best teacher. Smartest person I know. The very definition of savoir-faire. An avatar of grace and charm.Her extension of friendship and love, one of the best things that ever happened to my wife.The final arbiter in all matters sartorial or gustatorial. I am ashamed in expressing my grief in front of her; I am faced with my selfishness. Forgive me, Carlene. Your grief must seem inconsolable.

Yet a little while, Carlene, and all of us who have tasted of the grace of Christ will re-unite with Dale in a place unencumbered by time or grief or doctor appointments, or medication. And Dale will have the Jordan Pond bars. And the party will begin.

As many of you know, my father was not a man given to linguistic excess: he had sufficient respect for the power of words that he would not use them lightly. For example, if he were eating a particularly delectable serving of prime rib, he would never have declared it “the best prime rib ever,” because he would have readily recognized the possibility that there might be still better prime rib out there somewhere.

I have inherited this penchant for linguistic precision, and showed signs of it even at an early age. Apparently, at some point during my younger years, I told my father something to the effect of “Daddy, of all the fathers I know, you’re definitely in the top five.” Far from being insulted, he was both delighted and touched, because he recognized that this was no mere outpouring of well-meaning but childish hyperbole; it was a carefully considered declaration of my affection.

I have also inherited my father’s — and mother’s — love of literature, and my husband claims that I can’t get through a day without quoting some of it (my response to this assertion was “Why would I want to?”). I turn to literature for entertainment, but also for edification and encouragement, which is why I chose to include excerpts from certain poems in today’s program.

In the first poem, “Death, Be Not Proud,” John Donne is essentially challenging Death, telling Death, “You may think you’re all strong and tough, but you’re really not that impressive — or permanent — after all.” In Anne Bradstreet’s “As Weary Pilgrim,” Bradstreet builds on the idea of the transience of life and death through the Biblical metaphor of Christians as pilgrims traveling on a journey to heaven. Like my father, Bradstreet lived long enough to grow weary of the physical as well as spiritual challenges of this world, and eagerly anticipated moving on to the next world. Bob Lair, one of my father’s closest friends, who passed away a few years ago, offers a more recent perspective on this concept. I especially love the image of being “catapulted into the arms of Jesus.”

I know that not everyone shares my family’s fondness for poetry, but I do hope that over the next few days, you’ll take some time to read over these excerpts on your own, and let the wisdom and beauty of these poets’ words minister to you. However, whether you do or not, I’d feel remiss if, at a service for my father, we didn’t read at least one full poem aloud, so let’s take an extra minute or two now for the final poem mentioned in the program, by my father’s favorite poet, George Herbert:

Death

By George Herbert

Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,
Nothing but bones,
The sad effect of sadder groans:
Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.

For we considered thee as at some six
Or ten years hence,
After the loss of life and sense,
Flesh being turned to dust, and bones to sticks.

We looked on this side of thee, shooting short;
Where we did find
The shells of fledge souls left behind,
Dry dust, which sheds no tears, but may extort.

But since our Savior’s death did put some blood
Into thy face,
Thou art grown fair and full of grace,
Much in request, much sought for as a good.

For we do now behold thee gay and glad,
As at Doomsday;
When souls shall wear their new array,
And all thy bones with beauty shall be clad.

Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust
Half that we have
Unto an honest faithful grave;
Making our pillows either down, or dust.

Herbert beautifully understands a point that C. S. Lewis makes in his novel The Screwtape Letters. The premise of this novel is that the character Screwtape is a senior demon with a long and successful history of tempting humans and keeping or leading them away from God, and now Screwtape is writing letters to his nephew, Wormwood, an inexperienced junior tempter who needs his assistance. Since the novel is set in wartime, young Wormwood is excited about the death and destruction, but Screwtape warns him that death is only to their demonic benefit if those who die are not Christians. He notes of humans that “They, of course, do tend to regard death as the prime evil and survival as the greatest good. But that is because we have taught them to do so. Do not let us be infected by our own propaganda.” As Herbert attests, death may indeed be the “prime evil” if we “look on this side of” it. And as Screwtape recognizes, death is also the “prime evil” for anyone who hopes to be saved by his own merits, or for any reason other than Christ’s sacrifice.

However, my father did not believe hell’s propaganda, did not think of death as the “prime evil.” He knew that, as a flawed human being, he would see heaven only by trusting in Christ’s blood, shed for our sins and validated by Christ’s resurrection. Yet because he did have this faith, he was not afraid to die; he saw death as “fair and full of grace … much sought for as a good.”

My father would have said his sins were many — and I think we could each say the same of ourselves, seeing our own hearts more clearly than even the people closest to us can. But most of what I saw in my father was worthy of praise, admiration, and emulation. I’ll close with these two examples my mother shared with me just the other day….

“Soon after I married your father,” she told me, “we were at a picnic for the children of our church, and someone got into a bee’s nest. I just grabbed the nearest kid and ran, and others were doing the same — but when I looked back, there was your father. He was standing over the nest, letting himself get stung multiple times, until everyone else could get a safe distance away. This showed me the character of the man I had married.”

My mother then noted that even after forty-five years of marriage, his character had stayed much the same. “In recent months,” she said to me, “I’ve often had physical issues that required me to ask for his help, and if he was sleeping, I’d have to wake him up. Whenever I did, he’d always turn to me with a kind smile, as if to say, ‘I’m so glad to see you.'”

When my mother shared these examples with me, I cried, and am crying now as I type them up, and may cry again when I hear them read. My father often said, “The best gift a father can give his children is to love their mother.” I don’t think he was the origin of this insight, but he certainly lived it on a daily basis.

Out of respect for his and my aforementioned linguistic precision, I’m still not positive I could say he was the absolute best father in the world … however, it’s very hard for me to imagine a better one.

Meredith’s dad, Dale, did pass away on Sunday, June 22nd. We were still en route to Dublin to catch a plane home. We got home to our house around 11:45 Monday night. That was not a terrible thing – we did not have to see Dale sick in his hospital bed. Aunt Mary and Carlene (Meredith’s mom) were there, and they sang hymns as Dale’s breathing slowed and then stopped. It sounded very peaceful, and we got home soon enough to start to help with the planning for calling hours and a memorial service. Dale will be laid to rest in Carlene’s family plot in Maine, so we will be up there as well.

Here is what Meredith wrote for the obituary for her dad:

Dale Barton King, age 84, made the final steps of his earthly pilgrimage on Sunday, June 22, 2014. Born to Frank and Mary King in Flint, Mich., he is survived by his brother, Frank King; his sister, Mary King; his wife, Carlene Wooster King, and their daughter, Meredith King Riordan and her husband, Matt.

Though he had not originally intended to become an English professor, those who knew him would have been hard pressed to imagine his having become anything else. Upon realizing his desire for a liberal arts education, Dale transferred from Kansas City Bible College to Bob Jones University. After earning his undergraduate degree from Bob Jones, he did graduate work at both the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia, where he was a DuPont Fellow. He began his professorial career at Bob Jones, but spent the majority of it at Malone College (now University), including a year as an exchange professor at Hong Kong Baptist College, which prompted a Malone student to complain, “Why are they sending one of the best teachers away?” Following his retirement from Malone in 1995, he and Carlene moved to Casselberry, Fla.; however, rather than taking up fishing or golfing, he found himself returning to the classroom, this time at The Geneva School. Initially filling a mid-year need for a junior high history teacher, he ended up teaching high school English at Geneva for over a decade, not truly retiring until the age of 80, and considering his time at Geneva to have been a delightful and rewarding postscript to his teaching career. His love of literature was superseded only by his love for his family and his Lord. He cherished his wife throughout their 45 years of marriage and raised a daughter who has been greatly blessed by his wisdom, encouragement, and example. Throughout his life, he sought to know God better and to communicate this knowledge to those around him. During the 70s and 80s, he served as a part-time pastor at New Baltimore Community Church in New Baltimore, Ohio, and was most recently a grateful and enthusiastic member of St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church in Orlando, Fla.. Those who had the privilege of knowing Dale will miss his spiritual insights, his sense of humor, and his annual Christmas letters that sent most readers running to the dictionary multiple times.

We started this Sunday off by going to church at a Methodist church in Donegal. The people were very friendly, and the service was quite nice. The pastor had a children’s lesson on gift-giving through the last hundred years, from cloth wrapping to brown paper to fancy wrapping paper. All three gifts contained the name “Jesus” and the point was that God gave us a great gift in the form of Jesus, who has stayed the same through the ages. The actual sermon was quite good as well, with the passage being based on two passages – one when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, and the other when Peter, John, and some others go fishing, and then come to shore when Jesus tells them where to cast their nets to catch a large number of fish. The point of the sermon was that Jesus calls us “to get out feet wet.” We should be serving each other, and looking to engage the area in which God has put us. We should see the beauty around us and be thankful for it, and we should try to share that beauty.

After church, I checked my e-mail. I had a message from Aunt Mary that indicated that Mer’s father, Dale, was quite ill and in intensive care in the hospital. I used Skype on the computer to call home, and after talking with Aunt Mary and doctors at the hospital, we decided we should make every effort to get home efficiently.  Our B and B hostess was out, so we took a walk out to the river in Donegal, and walked along the lower walking area along the bay for a little ways. We had a very good view of the bay. We headed back to the B and B, where we found our hostess there, so we explained everything to her.  Before going to the airport, I decided to try to see if we could get tickets, so we managed to book tickets on Aer Lingus for tomorrow (Monday). That was a huge relief. Marie, our hostess at the Water’s Edge B and B, only charged us for two nights (it was 3:00 in the afternoon, so she could have charged us for another day). I strongly recommend Marie’s place if you ever get to Donegal.

What followed was about four hours of pretty driving to get us to Dublin. We dropped off the car and got a shuttle bus to the airport and then a shuttle bus to our hotel. By then, it was about 7:30. We still needed to eat, so we got a cab to Grafton Street in downtown Dublin, where we ate at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen restaurant, which seems to be a chain (at least, we ate at one in London a few years ago).

After supper, we wandered down Grafton Street to Stephen’s Green, a large park in the middle of the city. We wanted to get a picture of the statue of the poet Yeats that is there. To our surprise, the park was locked. It is enclosed by a fence, and there was no way in. It must close at 9:00 or so (it was 9:05).

Disappointed, but undeterred, we headed over to another nearby park to get a picture of the statue of Oscar Wilde. Happily, we got there five minutes before the park closed, so although we could not enjoy the park, we did get the photo.

We also wanted to see the grounds of Trinity College. We knew the buildings would be locked, but the grounds were also walled in, and we saw no way to get in. Lastly, there was a statue I wanted to get a picture of – one of Molly Malone. There is an Irish song about a young woman who sells seafood, and her name is Molly Malone in the song, and there was a statue of her on Grafton Street. Note the “was” — because of construction, the statue was moved. It was only moved two blocks away, but we did not know that until I checked when we got back to the hotel. We went 1-for-4 in Dublin, but it was still a good evening to walk about, especially where we could not do any good in the hotel (as far as getting home).

So, if all goes well, we should be back in Toronto around 4:30 tomorrow, and then have to clear customs before driving the five hours back home.

One of the gems of traveling is the unexpected, especially when it involves people delighting you in unexpected ways. Today, after a later start, we headed west to the edge of Donegal, to the tiny town of Malinbeg. Malinbeg is home to the Silver Strand, an amazing beach towered over by hills on three sides. We took the stairs down to the beach, where there was a group of late-teens playing some kind of ball game. As we approached, it became obvious that these very Irish kids were playing American baseball. With a tennis ball. And a cricket bat. And their diamond looked more like a trapezoid. And at the end of an inning, one team declared that it had “four points.” And they were having a great time playing, and we loved watching them and listening to them more or less get the rules mostly right. What a wonderful moment.

The beach was great too. We walked the length of it, and we marveled at how the sheep were grazing on what to us appeared to be impossible angles on the sides of hills. The sun was warm when it came out from behind the clouds, and there was a steady, easy breeze. We loved it — what an amazing spot in which to be. It was recommended to us by an Irishman we met fourteen years ago, and I still had his e-mail. He was kind enough to send a reply, and strongly recommended Malinbeg, where he was born. I am deeply grateful that he told us to go there.

After we made the long climb back up the stairs, we headed over to the nearby town of Glencolmcille. We had been in Glencolmcille briefly fourteen years ago, but had only seen a little of the place. This time we stopped at the local folk village, a small museum of seven houses that showed how Irish houses looked in the eighteenth century, from around 1850, and from the early twentieth century. All the houses had thatched roofs, but the later they got, the bigger they got. Some of the same things popped up that we saw in the Muckross Farm houses on Thursday, such as the children sleeping inside a bed/bench in the main room of the two-room house. We also learned about Father McDyers, who was a local priest who encouraged the town to build the folk museum as a way to encourage tourism and help make local jobs. He also pushed to get the town electricity and running water in the 1950s. He seemed like a very good man.

We ate a quick lunch at the folk museum tea room, and then we tried to drive into the valley to find a cool-looking church we could see from a distance, but we took a wrong turn and were guided by signs toward St. Colmcille’s chapel, which took us down a very narrow road that dead-ended at a house at the foot of a large hill. I had remembered that hill from our last visit because we had tried to climb it, but realized we were running out of daylight. This time, I just turned the car around, and we found the church we were seeking, which was a small, pretty Church of Ireland church, surrounded by an old, but still-in-use, graveyard. The church was also only about fifty yards from a carved standing stone that looked to be pre-Christian.

After Glencolmcille, we drove over to a sight recommended to us by our friend Jenny and her husband Dan — the cliffs called Slieve Leauge. The locals claim they are the tallest sea cliffs in Europe, but that is debated (Wikipedia has them listed at sixth place). Regardless, they are tall, at 601 meters (1970 feet). They’re easy to get to, depending on how much walking you want to do. We parked at the first parking lot, which leaves about a twenty-minute walk. You can drive up to the viewing area and save the walk, but the road is narrow in many places, and there are many hikers about. Plus, it is a beautiful walk.

The cliffs are very dramatic. They also stretch on for a long time, jutting out into the sea. You can actually climb up to the top of them, and walk along the spine of the cliffs (which fall away on both sides in some places) on a trail called One Man’s Path. Needless to say, with my fear of heights, I did not attempt that. I did marvel at the tiny silhouettes of the people walking up on the edge. We stayed on the safe observation platform, and then climbed as high as the protective fence went. There, I turned around and went back to a bench to sit. Mer went a little bit higher and found a rock on which to sit and contemplate the cliffs.

After the return trip to the car, it was about 6:00. So, we drove the scenic ocean road back to near Killybegs, and from there took the major road back to Donegal. We dropped the car off at the B and B, and walked to town, where we ate at an Italian restaurant. We grabbed a couple of pastries from a shop, and ate them sitting next to the water back at the B and B, while we lavished attention on one of the outdoor rescue kitties that live around the B and B. By then, it was time to get ready for bed.

Mer officially handed off “being in charge” to me this morning. So, for better or worse, I have to make the decisions for the last week of our vacation. I got off to a rocky start.

We slept in as long as we could at the hostel this morning, and then grabbed breakfast in town (Kenmare) at a very cute cafe off of a side street. That was a good decision. Plus one for Our Hero.

After we checked out of the hotel, we got in the car and headed back to the Killarney National Park one more time. It was on our way (north), and I really wanted to see the last major sight we had missed – the Muckross Abbey, near the Muckross House. Before we got to the house, we did a quick stop at the Ladies Overlook again, to look at the view one more time, but also to get a good picture of both of us in front of that magnificent country.

We parked at the Muckross House parking lot and walked to the Abbey, which took about ten minutes. It was well worth a stop. The Abbey was forcefully abandoned under Cromwell in the late 1600s, so it is in ruins now, but the walls are still standing. The Abbey does not look too impressive as you approach it, but it turns out the complex is quite large. The Abbey was built around a courtyard which contains an ancient yew tree. The building was two stories in most places, and there was a four-story bell tower, which was unfortunately closed. The Abbey was full of low doorways and mysterious-looking stairs, and I had a ball exploring it. Plus two for Our Hero.

Then came the Long Drive. I wanted to get to Donegal before evening, and that is about a six-hour drive. But I wanted to stop in Lisdoonvarna to eat at a pub highly recommended by my brother and a friend of his. That would make the drive closer to seven hours, plus the time it would take to eat. Still, that was possible.

We got to Lisdoonvarna around 3:00, and found the pub/restaurant Shannon had mentioned. The door was locked, so we looked for another way in. While we were doing that, another man came up and someone opened the door for him, so we went back, only to find that the bar only does dinner. So we had gone an hour out of our way and could not eat there. Minus one for Our Hero. Happily, it gave us an excuse to drive along the border of the Burren, a desolate limestone area that is stark but beautiful.

Fast-forward several hours. After a long drive north, along which we saw some pretty mountains north of Sligo (including the poet Yeats’ favorite mountain, the distinctive Ben Bulben), we arrived in Donegal. It was about 7:00, and Donegal was much bigger than I had remembered (not huge – just bigger than I’d remembered). I beat a hasty retreat out of the town center and went back to a B and B for which I had seen a sign, and it turned out to have a room. It also had the bonus of being on the bay, which was quite lovely.

We walked into town to get supper, and picked a great-seeming restaurant. The food was good, but it took about forty minutes for me to get a burger and Mer to get a cup of soup. That was frustrating, and I’m not sure what took so long.

We got back to the B and B and jumped in the car to drive another forty minutes west, to the small town of Kilcar, to go to a pub to hear a musician we met the last time we were in Ireland, fourteen years ago. We found the pub around 10:15 (the singer was supposed to go on at 10:00), but we were surprised to find the pub empty except for the barkeeper. The owner of the pub, a very friendly man, came in after a few minutes to explain that the singer could not make it. Minus one for Our Hero again. We did get to chat about the Donegal area with the owner for about twenty minutes. It was a long drive back, and we did not get back to the B and B until about 11:15.

Happy note there – there was still just enough daylight to make out the bay, so we sat and watched it for a minute or two, until Mer declared it was cold, so we headed in. Overall, not the greatest day of touring, but not terrible – I count myself coming in at a score of zero for the day. But we are in Donegal, which was the goal, so I hope to have more successful days coming in the next few.

To make up for what was almost a sixteen-hour day yesterday, Mer had a mellow day planned for today. We got a later start, going out in the town to look for breakfast. I picked a restaurant based on the facts that it was serving breakfast and I knew it had internet access (our hostel’s internet connection is very poor, even when it is working). I needed to update my blog, and I’d promised a few folks that I would check my e-mail daily. Word to the the wise, though – when you order your very excellent three-egg omelets, check on the price when you enter the restaurant. Two omelets and two glasses of tap water came out to over thirty dollars. Ouch.

We finished up breakfast around 10:00, and after a brief stop in the room, we went to the town’s TI (Tourist Information center), which has a very small museum on the history of Kenmare. It was informative, telling about the town’s clan history and the founding of the town in the 1800s or so (it surprised me how late it was). The museum told about a few key figures, from hated town manager/agents to beloved priests and nuns, and it told of the rise and fall of the Kenmare lace trade. It had a panel or two on the Famine as well, and some of the measures taken to try to help local people. It only took about thirty minutes to see everything, but I enjoyed it.

We went back to the car and headed back toward the Killarney National Park, but before we got back to the Muckross House area, as I was expecting, we turned off at Kissane Sheep Farm. Mer wanted to see the demonstrations of sheep herding and sheep shearing. The farm was closed, but was going to have a demonstration at 1:00, which gave us a little over an hour to do something else.

Happily, that something else was to go see a waterfall, the Torc waterfall, near the Muckross House. I had seen signs to it when we were there on Tuesday, and I had dropped a subtle hint or two (or three). The waterfall was a short and very pretty walk from the parking lot, and we walked next to a stream the whole way, in the middle of a dense forest. The waterfall did not disappoint, and we spent about fifteen minutes just sitting next to the stream watching the water.

We headed back to the sheep farm, and this time they were open. We were the first people there, so we got to chat a little with the woman taking money, who is  the sheep dogs’ trainer, and she is from Germany. We also got to pet one of the farm cats. More people trickled in, and around 1:00 we were joined by a tour bus, and the demonstration was ready to go. We headed out to a platform that overlooked some astonishingly beautiful fields and grazing lands, and we were shown four different border collies doing their jobs.

It was amazing – the dogs responded to called-out commands, and they roamed all over the field and hills chasing and herding sheep. There were very fast, smart, and really effective at their jobs. They worked well as a team, and the handler never even had to move to get all the sheep gathered and in a pen.

We headed over to the barn, where we got to see a large, muscular man manhandle a sheep and shear its wool. He was able to shear the sheep in about three minutes, and the farmer said the shearer could do about three hundred sheep a day during busy season. The farm has about fifteen hundred adult sheep, and around a thousand lambs currently. Three of the lambs had been born within the last week, and they were awfully cute.

Having been impressed by one farm, we headed to several others in the form of the Muckross Traditional Farms, in the park near the Muckross House. This collection of three farmhouses and associated buildings preserves the look and traditional means of farming from about 1930, before electricity came to rural Ireland (the last parts of Ireland to get electricity got it in the 1970s).

The three farmhouses represented typical ones from a small farm (about twenty acres), a medium farm (about fifty acres), and a large farm (a hundred acres). Each farm had a woman in the house to explain how the farm ran, and they offered us bread that was made over the hearth in the house (it was quite good). The small farm was quite basic, with just two rooms, with the children sleeping in the main room and the parents sleeping in their own room. The medium farm added one room, a second bedroom for the children. The large farm was quite elaborate by comparison, with several rooms, including two dining rooms.

The farm had live animals, including two huge Clydesdale horses. There were a couple of kittens we saw (and we got to pet one), and we saw a four-day-old donkey who looked ready to be out in the pasture. There were puppies, and chickens, and turkeys, and even a peacock. All of this was surrounded by the mountains of the park, so it was a very pleasant walk as well as an education.

After we finished up the farm, around 4:30, Mer let me have my way. We headed back to the car, and started to head toward Kenmare, but I was distracted by a sign for “The Meeting of the Waters.” It was a fifteen-minute hike from the parking lot, and behind a tea room, but it was a beautiful and secluded spot where the three lakes all joined together in a narrow channel. We sat there for several minutes, and then wandered over to a small path that led to the double-arched bridge we had seen, called the Weir Bridge. The walk was a bit rough, but short, and the view from the bridge was looking over a lake at several mountains, so it was worthwhile.

We got back to the car and this time did head back to Kenmare. We parked the car and, after a brief stop in the room, went out to supper at a local bar and restaurant, Davitt’s. We got a table, and within a few minutes two musicians were setting up right in front of us. The man played the fiddle, and the woman played guitar and sang. We got to hear over thirty minutes of music while we ate, which, as they say here, was grand.

Finally, being somewhat addicted to dessert, we picked up some ice cream bars and candy bars from the grocery store, and we found a bench in a park on which to eat them. The evening was very fine, and it was a mellow way to end the first week of touring. I get to take over now, which should be interesting, since I have only some idea of what to do and where to go.

Life has many choices, and our hostel has helped out by removing one of them – the pesky shower controls. These have been replaced by a single “on” button that shoots out as-hot-as-you-can-stand-it water, for about forty-five seconds at a time, after which you can hit the button again. It certainly saves water, as my shower lasted all of about three minutes.

Mer had us up early and on the road by about 7:15 this morning. We headed west and north out onto the Ring of Kerry. It was early enough that we did not meet much traffic, and none of the later-in-the-day tour buses. We turned off the “main” road (if such a thing exists in Ireland), and we turned onto an often-one-lane road where the speed limit still fluctuated between 45 and 60 mph. Driving in Ireland often feels like a driving video game, but with sheep in the road sometimes.

We drove far out on to the Iveragh Peninsula (which is where people do the famous Ring of Kerry loop drive), on to the Ring of Skellig. This path is closed to tour buses, as the roads are far too narrow to accommodate them. If you meet an oncoming car, you have to pull over as far as you can into the bushes, and slow to a crawl or a stop until the other car gets past. It is interesting.

Mer directed us over an excitingly narrow pass that lacked drop-offs, but made up for it in blind, one-lane, hairpin turns. The views all along the drive were tremendous — fields, mountains, ocean, cute towns. After about two hours, we arrived at our destination, Portmagee, where we were supposed to catch a boat out to Skellig Michael, a jut of rock seven miles out in the ocean that housed a monastery from about 600 to about 1100. Sadly, one of the two boats going out was broken, so they asked us to come back at 2:00 (we were scheduled for 9:30). There was nothing we could do about it, so we agreed, but it meant back-tracking over the same road on which we had come in, to go back one hour to get to another sight Mer wanted to see.

But first, food. My breakfast of a granola bar and one roll had worn thin, so I insisted on getting some food. Mer knows that one of the best ways to keep me happy is to keep me fed, so she agreed. We overshot our destination by about a mile so I could go to a market and buy two chicken sandwiches and two candy bars for our very early lunch. We ate them on a covered patio overlooking the ocean.

After lunch, we headed down another horse-track-width road to Derrynane House, the home of Daniel O’Connell. Daniel O’Connell is known in Ireland as “The Liberator,” as he fought for the rights of Irish Catholics during the 1800s, using non-violence, through law and politics. His home is fairly simple, although a grateful Catholic community built him a chapel next to his house. The grounds are amazing and fairly wild, and are now a national park. To tour the house costs a little, but it was free on our Heritage Cards. The tour took about a half hour, which was followed by a twenty-minute film on the life of O’Connell. It was interesting. After the tour and film, we took a quick glance at the chapel (simple, but nice) and the fancy carriage O’Connell’s supporters gave him when he was released from a several-month prison term.

By then, we had to drive the hour back to the boat for the tour. Since Skellig Michael is seven miles out in the ocean, it took about an hour to get out there. The trip was lovely, with calm seas, lots of sun, and great views of all three peninsulas (Beara, Kerry, and Dingle).

Next to Skellig Michael is Little Skellig, a bird sanctuary. It roosts about sixty thousand gannets, which are large white sea birds. As you approach the island, it looks as if it is covered in snow.

Skellig Michael looms over the sea. It is about seven hundred feet high, with no vegetation other than grasses. The island seems to come straight out of the sea. We pulled in to a dock in a crack in the rock, and filed off the boat. We were there to hike up six hundred very steep steps that lacked any guard rails, and usually had a nasty fall off one side. Interesting. The prize was a collection of beehive huts and a few other primitive buildings at the very top.

I was worried my fear of heights would kick in, and Mer was worried she might trip. We made it about halfway up when Mer’s fear of tripping really began to worry her. A guide who lives on the island was coming down, and she told us the steps got steeper at the top, and there was a ledge that needed to be crossed. That worried me, so after talking things over with the guide, we all headed down, with the help of another guide. Mer was disappointed, but after fifteen or twenty minutes, we went back up the steps a little ways to a viewing point and sat there for ten minutes to enjoy the view (and the rather fun noise puffin birds make, which sounds like small chainsaws).

Back on the boat,  the captain took us halfway around the island to show us the lighthouses. Along the way, we saw two seals sunning themselves. We then were treated to a close-up view of Little Skellig and its sixty thousand inhabitants. We were not pooped on, but I got some secondary splatter on a near-miss.

The seas on the trip back were rougher, and we got wet from spray a few times. This reinforced to us that neither Mer nor I am fit to be a sailor. It was fun on one trip, but I think that would get old pretty quickly.

After the hour back on the boat, we still had the two-hour car drive, and it was already 6:30. So, we headed back over the same stretch of road for the fourth time. About seventy-five minutes into the drive, we did take a short detour to go see a well-preserved two-thousand-year-old ring fort that was made by piling stones on one another (no mortar). We ran into a charming older Irish couple in this remote fort, and chatted with them briefly. The fort was being besieged by a herd of cows and sheep, but they must have a treaty in place, because they let us pass.

We finally got back to Kenmare a little after 9:00, and we found a pub/restaurant still serving food around 9:30. That was happy, because shortly thereafter, the live music started. We tried a bunch of times to find live music in Kinsale, and only found it by accident at the Tap Tavern. In Kenmare, we have heard strains of music coming out of multiple places on both nights we have been here. Our musician played guitar and sang, and we got to hear him for over a half hour before we were done eating. It was very pleasant.

After supper, we found that the local ice cream shop was still open, so we tried it. My cookies and cream was only okay, but Mer got some unusual flavors that she liked (a banana-toffee mixture and a candy ice cream). Oh – if an Irish ice cream place puts fudge pieces on your ice cream, it means soft caramels. Just for your information.
We got back to the hostel at dark – the first time that has happened on this vacation, since evening comes so late here. Here is hoping things go a little more according to Mer’s plan tomorrow.

We bid our hostess Mary goodbye this morning. If anyone ever has reason to be in Kinsale, look up the Seagull – Mary was willing to do just about anything to make our stay nicer. As she would say – a grand woman.

We jumped in the car and headed northwest. The landscape change dramatically as soon as we left County Cork and entered Kerry – suddenly there were numerous mountains, and they were either covered in forest and heather or were rough stone and grasses. It was very beautiful. We headed on into Killarney National Park, to the Muckross House and gardens.

Oh, my, was that amazing. The house is very fine – a large mansion built in the 1860s, and donated to Ireland in the late 1920s. Much of the furniture is original, and the house is in excellent shape. What is most eye-catching is the setting – it overlooks Lake Muckross, which is surrounded by mountains covered in trees and purple heather. It was gorgeous.

We used our Heritage Cards we had bought back in Kinsale to book a tour of the house for free, but it was scheduled for about forty minutes later. So, we took the opportunity to roam the grounds and part of the gardens. I stumbled across a small, rough staircase made of rock, and we took it up into a rock garden, where the path was carved rock, and bedrock mixed in with the flowers and trees. It was very private-feeling, and there were numerous rock paths around. I loved it. After we explored the rock garden, we meandered down to Lake Muckross, where we took in the beauty as best we could. By then it was time for the tour.

The house tour lasted about an hour, and was well done. Our group was a bit large, consisting of about twenty-five people (including a family that had been with us on the Kinsale history walk yesterday). The main thing Mer and I took away was that we should never host a sovereign; it seems the owners of the house prepared for THREE years for a visit by Queen Victoria, a visit which lasted two nights. Sheesh. The house was elegant, and it was a good tour.

After the house tour, we had about twenty minutes before we had to head off to the hostel where we would be staying, so we explored more of the gardens, finding another small rock garden, a small stream garden, and a lower lawn garden, all of which were designed to make one feel solitude. The grounds are excellent (and free to the public).

We got back in the car and drove out to Kenmare, which is at the head of the Beara Peninsula. As we left the national park, we were treated to several dramatic views, which caused me to tell Mer that I thought I had just seen Michael with a flaming sword (i.e., guarding the entrance to the Garden of Eden). Amazing. The views from a pull-off named The Ladies View were breathtaking.

We checked in to our hostel (in a large double room with a private bath), and headed back out again after a short rest. We grabbed lunch from a market, and headed off. Mer told me we were doing a driving tour of the Beara Peninsula. I have to admit I was not thrilled; the roads were very narrow, and the drivers were driving very fast. Still, off we went. I’m very glad we did.

There were so many “Wow!” moments that the drive is a bit hard to describe. The drive went along a bay (oddly called the Kenmare River), then up and up and up over Healy Pass on a winding and almost one-lane road. Once over the pass, the road wound down to the sea again, to Bantry Bay, and then back up over another pass. The terrain changed over and over again, from small fields to ocean to almost alien-looking landscapes of rock and grass. It was the most spectacular drive I can ever remember making.

My favorite part was Healy Pass. We pulled off at one spot, and Mer commented on how quiet it was – there were no cars or even birdsongs (because there were no trees). We could hear the occasional bleat of a sheep (yes, there were free-roaming sheep in the road, just to make driving even more interesting). The pull-off looked out over several mountains and a lake far below. It was amazing.

We got a tad lost on the way back to Kenmare, which ended up being a fifteen-minute detour that was also pretty, as it took us down to the ocean. Once back in town, we parked the car and had supper at a local Italian restaurant (Bella Vita), followed by ice cream from the market, which was still open. We ate the ice cream back at the hostel, and then called it a night.

Mer had us up a bit earlier than we were the last few days, and after breakfast, I found out why. We headed down to the Tourist Information Center, where around 9:00 we met up with Barry, a local man who gives really entertaining and informative tours of Kinsale. We headed off with Barry and seven other Americans, which kept the narrative personal. Barry took us on a short walk to the harbor, and up the hill to where part of the old town wall is located, and then down to the main square where the harbor used to come up to, and finished off at the courthouse. Along the way, he told us about the Battle of Kinsale, and the British fortification of the town after they won that battle. He also said how the battle had ripple effects down to recent times – it seems that two of the main Irish leaders in the battle were from northern Ireland, and their land was confiscated and given over to Protestant Scottish settlers. This led more or less directly to Northern Ireland’s being separated from the Republic after the 1921 independence.

After the tour, we grabbed the bus back to Cork, to go pick up The Car. The car that gets driven on the wrong side of the road. By me. In a stick-shift. Yay. I did decide to pay the not-cheap option of getting full coverage on the car — I have seen too may Irish roads to be relaxed about insurance.

We drove out of Cork on the way east to Cobh (pronounced “cove”). A few thoughts about driving in Ireland – traffic laws are suggestions. Speed limits can be optional, no-passing zones can force you onto the shoulder to avoid oncoming passing traffic, parking in one lane of a two-lane road is common. Oh, yeah – and they drive on the wrong side of the road. Still, I managed, although the driving takes much of my attention, which makes me feel as if I’m nineteen again.

We parked in Cobh by Cobh’s huge and central cathedral. It seemed like a huge cathedral for a smaller town, but the town is one of the busiest ports in Ireland. I suspect there is some money in town. But we were there to see “The Titanic Experience” — an interactive museum about the Titanic.

The Titanic’s last port of call before it sailed across the Atlantic was Cobh (Queenstown at the time). The museum actually is situated in the old ticket office, and you can recognize the building in old pictures; 123 people boarded the Titanic at Cobh, and a handful got off there.

The museum was fairly small, but excellent. They had mockups of a third-class and a first-class room, and the third-class room was not too bad, actually. It had electric lights and running water, and food was included with the ticket (that was not common at the time). The first-class room (which cost $69,000 in today’s money) was not terribly big, but it did get the user access to the first-class amenities, like the dining and reading rooms.

The last room in the museum told all the things that went wrong on the trip, and it was amazing how they piled up — the ship was going near maximum speed at night through an area known to have icebergs. The radio operators did not work for the ship (they were private operators), and they did not pass on all the ice warnings they received. The binoculars were missing from the lookout tower, so the lookouts had to rely on their eyes only. A sudden ten-degree temperature drop (common around icebergs) was ignored. There were a few more things that I forget as well, but many things went wrong on the Titanic.

We grabbed a quick supermarket late lunch, and headed back to the car. Mer had me drive further east, to the small coastal town of Ardmore. Ardmore has an amazing beach (where I waded in the Atlantic), a path along a dramatic (but still safe) cliff area , a still-standing round tower, and a couple of holy wells. On top of that, the town was very well-kept and cute, and it had a tea room/coffee shop with excellent cupcakes.

We got to hear an older man playing guitar and singing, and he was very talented. I chatted with him for a few minutes, and he plays five instruments in all, and he leads tours of the cliff walk. Sadly, as it was after 5:00, he was done for the evening, but that was a fun encounter. Previously, on the beach, a nice man took our picture, and we chatted for a minute or two about how he was trying to train his puppy to like the ocean (the puppy was not so sure about it).

We did the cliff walk at a leisurely pace, and wandered around the church and round tower and cemetery when we got there. We still noticed the use of Scripture quotations on many of the headstones, although it was not quite so common on the headstones of the last thirty years (although it still happened on some of them). Sadly, the round tower is closed to the public, but it is in great shape. The church was in ruins with no roof, but the walls were still intact.

Our walk got us back to town and the car. The drive back to Kinsale was okay, although I stayed in the slow lane of any roads that had two lanes, just to be on the safe side. Back in Kinsale, we ate again at the Indian restaurant, Cobra Tandoori, as we had on Friday. It was still excellent. After supper, we checked e-mail and updated the blog by using the Tap Tavern’s internet access, chatted with a couple of Americans from the New York area, and then came home.