Keith's Magical Mystery Tour!

Last Sunday Liz, Andy, Beth and I had the pleasure of going on Keith's Magical Mystery Tour of the Highlands! Beth has been a few times already, but I get the impression that it's a little different each time so hopefully she wasn't too bored. We got up early (by early, I mean the earliest since we landed here, which actually ended up being 9-ish), got showered and squished into the Honda. The Peanut Gallery was in the back (me, Andy, and Liz) and started off with Liz in the middle. We got on the road and got comfy in the back, and not ten minutes later Keith whipped the car into a parking lot beside a big pen with two coos (cows) in it.

We got out and took a few pictures next to Hamish the Scottish coo, then quickly hopped back in, this time with Andy in the middle. We couldn't have been more than 30 minutes down the road when Keith made another unannounced (and very rapid) stop. This time we got out and walked down to the shore of a beautiful loch (lake) - not sure which one it was though. Apparently there are about a thousand lochs here, and Keith and Beth were a bit rusty on their Scottish geography. It was no matter though, as the countryside here is amazingly beautiful!

The picture to the right is my best attempt at a Captian Morgan stance, but unfortunately I just look...awkward. What's new? I've been told numerous times lately that I tend to stand like a lesbian. If you're wondering what that entails (as I did the first time I heard that) it means I stand like a guy - both feet planted shoulder-length apart, hands in my pockets or down at my sides. Apparently a lady stands with her weight on one leg and is constantly popping a pose, with one hand on her hip. I'm working on improving my standing-in-place posture, but don't expect too much from me. Let's remember that I grew up in a house full of males! Even the dog was a boy! Anyway, the point is that a lot of my pictures are awkward, but I always find them quite funny, so who cares? Moving on. Here's a fantastic picture I snapped as everyone else was running back to the Honda.

So we all piled back into the car, this time with me in the middle. Unfortunately for me, the next time we would get out was an hour and a half later. Wasn't too bad though, we were all recently bathed and I was actually quite comfy sandwiched between Liz and Andy.

We were having such a fantastic time on the tour that I decided to write a song about it, called "The Magical Mystery Tour Song". I only wrote a few verses (and haven't made any further progress up to today), but I wrote all my random ideas down in my little handy dandy notebook that stays in my purse, and I fully intend on finishing it sometime soon! Beth has a friend Euan that records music, so once I'm finished writing it I plan on recruiting him to get it onto a CD. It's gonna be...magical! Here's another picture of the breathtaking Scottish landscape.

Somewhere around noon Keith decided that we would stop in Fort William for lunch. We ate at this quaint little pub, where I had the best tomato soup, Beth and Liz had fish and chips, Keith had some kind of Sunday dinner roast beef special, and Andy had the biggest piece of sausage I've ever seen in my life. And of course we all had pints.

After lunch we had a potty break and walked around outside and admired the views in a park for a few minutes before piling back in the car. Next stop up, Loch Ness! Another hour in the car inspired a few more lines in my song. There's a lot of people here who do silly things like hill walk and ride bicycles, and Keith just so happens to hate all of them, which makes for a pretty entertaining ride when they are EVERYwhere!! Granted, it IS pretty stupid that a cyclist would ride on a windy highway road with deathly turns and blind spots. But I'm not really sure why he hated the hill walkers so much, as they were pretty far away from the roads and really just looked like little ants on their trails. Anyway, we finally made it to Loch Ness sometime in the afternoon. It was beautiful!! We took some pictures and I tried my darndest to spot Nessie, but I had no such luck. Below is a picture of me pretending like I saw her anyway. Add it to the "silly picture" pile if you will, but I think it's fabulous.

I then decided that I hadn't come all this way to just simply LOOK at the loch, so I walked down to the shore, took my shoes off, rolled up my jeans, and walked in! After I convinced Liz that the water wasn't freezing, she decided to come join in on the loch action. We probably looked really stupid, but how many other people can say they actually stepped foot in Loch Ness? Not many, if I had to guess. I don't have the pictures of that, but Liz does, and she put one up on her blog: http://epn0413.blogspot.com/ - shameless plug, you say? Possibly. Here's the newest best friend picture since we're on the subject:

So after about 30 minutes of picture taking and loch-wading, we piled in the Honda one last time and headed home. The ride back was a little more boring as we had seen it all already, so most of the ride was spent in silence with everyone in the Peanut Gallery dozing in and out of micro-naps. We thought we were headed home for an early night (finally!), but we were mistaken. Sunday happens to be quiz night at one of the pubs in Stirling, so as soon as we got home we called a cab and made our way on to the next adventure of the day! We got to the pub and met more of Beth and Keith's friends; this time it was Graham and his girlfriend Lana.

We started the quiz, and it turns out Graham is a freaking genius in many areas of random, otherwise useless knowledge. Except in the realm of current affairs, where our team got every question wrong. Liz, Andy, and I were no help there either since we had just arrived in the UK a week earlier! We ended up getting third out of six or seven teams, so we didn't win, but at least we weren't the stupidest (or drunkest) group there. The pub closed at midnight since it was a Sunday, so we hopped back into a cab and headed home. Graham and Lana came in and we drank and talked for a few more hours, before everyone finally hit the sheets at around 3am.