It was pi...ng down rain this morning as we set out towards Kilarney, Kilarney National Park and an attraction called Muckross House. The house is famous as a place where Queen Victoria spent two nights as the guests of the Herbert family during her 1849 visit to Ireland. The Herberts apparently spent 6 years preparing for that visit and commissioned all kinds of upgrades and decorations to the house. As a result of the expense (and other poor financial decisions) the family eventually went bankrupt and had to sell the house. One of the decorative features of the house are a large collection of deer heads (some stuffed and some just skeletons) displayed on the walls of many of the rooms. During the tour we learned that deer are now rare in Ireland and there is only one herd of red deer remaining in the country. They number about 800 and reside in the woods around Muckross House. Well we nearly had the misfortune to tell the guide that there were now only 799 as just before we arrived at the house a large red deer buck bounded across the road no more than 6 feet in front of our speeding car. We came within a few seconds of having a large lump of venison in the front seat with us.

After Muckross we motored towards Portmagee a little harbor village on the famous Ring of Kerry there was not much sightseeing on that drive as the rain made it unpleasant to get out of the car and the clouds obscured most of what we would want to see anyway. But, we did stop and have a quick look at a circular stone prehistoric fort (called Staigue Fort, built sometime between 500BC and 350AD). Quite an amazing structure built entirely without mortar.

The random collection of stones in the first photograph is a "stone circle" situated just outside the town of Kenmare. Nina went to look at it this morning before we got underway. We figured based on what she saw we could call our fire pit in Gig Harbor a "stone ring" also.