Scotland - Day 3

Day Three meant everyone was up early for our road trip up north to the Orkneys. We started out with two accidental scenic detours. The second one actually led us by Auchterarder and Gleneagles. At the time, we knew it was a famous golf course, but had no idea that in just a few weeks it would be the focus of world news for the G8 Summit.

We all stopped in Pitlochry mid-morning and visited the heather gems factory outlet store. Since David V. wanted to look for some special meat in a nearby town, Lori's group went that way. I stayed with Beth's group as we headed on to Inverness. We tried to find lunch in the village of Kingussie to no avail.

As we drove into Inverness, we managed to get lost for the third time that day and found ourselves heading west out of town along the Beauly Firth. Jim navigated us back into the center of town where we found the main shopping mall and shopping street and ate lunch. We strolled down the street shopping and Beth and I went all the way down to the castle.

We went back to the mall and met up with Lori's group at which time I joined up with them to make travel plans for the next couple of days while Beth's group traveled ahead. After making lodging arrangements for the next night, we realized we were going to have to take a shorter Orkney tour than Beth's group. After everything was settled, it was back on the road again.

We stopped in Golspie for supper and went down to the beach behind the restaurant and collected seashells. Then we went on to Keiss and settled into our hotel for the night. I had a nice view of Sinclair Bay out my window.