Ireland Journal

by Dana Wassum

June 3, 2007: Today we woke up to our first rainy day in Ireland. It just so happened that it was my birthday too. We got up early and headed on a 3 hour trip to the northern tip of Ireland for some sightseeing. As we stumbled off of the bus to figure out what we were doing for the day, we saw we were at a beautiful coast and a huge rope bridge.

After a 2km walk, we made our way through the muck and the mud to an old rope bridge that was built by fishermen about 30 meters up in the air. It went over a water passageway for fish to get to a little cove off of the main ocean area for safe hiding. So they built it so that they would have prime seats for catching these big fish. It was entertaining to watch all of us go across the bridge. We were able to see who was and who wasnt afraid of heights, and it turned out coach Mitzel was afraid along with a few of our teammates!

After venturing across the bridge and back, we made our way to the second sight of the day, the Giants Causeway. This was even more spectacular, as noted by the hundreds of people there on such a rainy nasty day. The myth behind the Giants Causeway is that there were two Giants competing, one in Ireland and the other in Scotland. They built a bridge across the causeway to get to each other. When looking at the rock formations it literally looks like someone stacked poles of rocks together to make a bridge and a gigantic seat as well as other formations. It was so interesting because it is the only natural phenomenon of its kind to have rock formations in perfect cylinders. There is still a small piece of it left in Scotland, but the majority is in Northern Ireland.

After this trip, we headed back towards the cottages after gathering some souveniers and stopped in a little town to eat lunch and do a little more shopping. Then we arrived back at the cottages for the night and all just hung out together.