Disclaimer: This document is for entertainment only and is not intended to instruct or educate anyone about anything. If you choose to emulate the stupid things I do you are on your own, and I take no responsibility for the consequences of your actions.

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Trip Report:

A few minutes after I left Dun Guaire Castle it started to rain.

Then a few minutes after that I saw this sign.

It occurred to me that touring a cave would be the perfect thing for waiting out the rain showers.

A restaurant and gift shop have been built around the entrance to Aillwee Cave. This is the rather medieval dungeon looking entrance to the cave.

The cave can only be entered as part of a guided tour led by someone wearing a bright red jacket.

If you saw this next picture in a different context you might assume that I am a smiling heroin addict in an alley in Manhattan, but no, I am just a goofy tourist playing with a flash camera in a cave in Ireland.

Aillwee cave was discovered around 1940 by a local herdsman when his dog chased a rabbit into the cave. The herdsman didn't tell anyone about the cave for decades so it did not open to the public until 1976. Along the tour route several interesting features are lit up. The first feature that we encountered was a bed previously used by hibernating brown bears, which are now extinct in Ireland.

There were also plenty of stalactites, stalagmites, sheer drops and other features that one might expect to find in a cave.

Here I am wondering if it has stopped raining outside.

And wonder of wonders, it had stopped raining!

The gray colored mountain off in the distance is part of The Burren, which a vast landscape of bare limestone in Western Ireland. I tend to be attracted to bare rocks, so driving around in the Burren seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do.

Apparently on that last picture I forgot to unzoom the camera before self-picturing.

I continued driving south for a while until I arrived at the glorious Cliffs of Moher.

Due to the insanely heavy visitation there was a major construction effort under way at and around the cliffs. In this next picture the yellow backhoe and assorted construction equipment detract from the view of the cliff side O'Brien's Castle.

There is a paved trail that has replaced the ancient dirt path along the most picturesque part of the cliffs. The pavement ends after a few hundred yards at a sign asking the public to venture no further. Everyone seemed to be ignoring this sign though, including children and old people, so I pretty much had to keep walking and feeding my fascination with vertical places.

A few hundred yards past the end of the pavement I came to a large flat area that also seemed to funnel the North Atlantic wind into a wind tunnel of sorts.

It was a kick, but I also got the uneasy impression that a strong gust might just blow me the hell off the cliffs and into the sea 700 feet below.

After leaving the wind tunnel the air got strangely calm, making for a pleasant stroll along the grassy cliff top.

Along the top of the cliffs there were ancient fences made of massive slate slabs.

The obvious purpose of these fences was to keep the cute little moo-moos from wandering off the edge.

On the way back I started eying this part of the cliff top. It is the only part that offers a clean, 90 degree stone edge that would be ideal for something like, oh I don't know, maybe dangling your legs over 700 feet of air while having a snack?

With all of the commodification and intense safety features being implemented at the Cliffs of Moher I knew I would only have one chance to fulfill my dream of 700 ft, shoe dangling, so I quickly scampered across the rock surface.

Then I joyfully dangled away.

Look at how happy my right foot is!

After a few dangle-seconds I heard a stern "Yo! Yo!" behind me. It was a garda who had apparently been taught that "Yo!" is an effective way to get the attention of jackass tourists from the world over.

The garda made it clear in no uncertain terms that my foot dangling party was over, so I sadly bid goodbye to this lovely, rocky piece of cliff top real estate.

After moving my snack plans from the cliff edge to the parking lot I packed up and headed roughly Northeast toward my next destination: Poulnabrone Dolmen.

Poulnabrone Dolmen is an ancient portal grave. The ancients used to bring the bones of certain of their departed and lay them within and around this structure. I found it's angles and the shadows that it cast with the help of the late afternoon light both aesthetic and soothing, especially after this rather loud group of German tourists left the site.

The Burren landscape that surrounded the dolmen was also quite lovely.

According to the interpretive signs at the entrance to this site livestock are brought in to graze there during the winter to keep the dolmen from being lost in a thicket. This highlights a noticeable difference in the way Americans and Europeans view "nature." In many European countries there is no record of a time when the landscape was not grazed, and so grazing is considered a component of the natural state of the land. As an American it is kind of odd to think of land that has always had agricultural impact, but in Ireland that's just the way it has always been.

I did want to see more of The Burren before dark so I snapped a few more pictures of the dolmen and got back on the road.

A few minutes later I was speeding down a single lane track, grinning like an idiot.

As the sun raced to set behind the rolling hills of the Burren I entered a beautiful, cultivated valley nestled between limestone ridges.

As luck would have it there was a hostel with a restaurant there as well. In that restaurant I consumed a very satisfying meal of smoked salmon, greens and the local bread, which eats like good wholesome cow feed. Delicious!

Amazingly there was still the tiniest bit of daylight left outside when I was done with dinner, so I squeezed in a couple more shots of The Burren in twilight.

As darkness finally descended on County Clare I settled in for the long drive back to Dublin. I arrived at Dermot's parent's house around midnight and quietly went to bed in preparation for a big day at Glendalough tomorrow.