Day 18, July 16, 2012

 I went to do my blog tonight and realized that I hadn't done one for yesterday. Shame on me! Well, here goes.

We left Kenmare on somewhat of a gray day and headed around the "Ring of Kerry" in a clockwise direction. The tourist books all recommend that you travel in a counter-clockwise direction but, not wanting to be conformists, and also not wanting to repeat a part of the route we had already done, we decided to go in this direction.

Our first stop was in the town of Sneem at something that sounded interesting to us, the Kerry Geopark Center. We learned a little about the rocks and geology of the are and, more importantly, we learned that there are dinosaur tracks in the rock on the Island of Valentia which was a sidetrip we could easily add to our trip today.

At Castlecove, we headed inland a few kilometers and came to the Staige Stone Fort, a fort the largest of it's size in the area, that was built about 2500 years ago. It made me wonder who they were protecting themselves from. The history of Ireland is quite fascinating.

From there, we continued west along the Ring of Kerry route until we came to the far west end of the Kerry Peninsula and started a round called the "Ring of Skelligs". There seem to be a lot of rings around here. We drove across a bridge separating the mainland from the Valentia Island. Our quest for dinosaur tracks had begun. We asked about the tracks at "The Skellig Experience Center". If the weather had been better, we may have taken a boat to the Skelligs which are rocky islands off the coast of Ireland where Skellig Michael, a monastic settlement dating to about the fifth century, was founded.

In spite of the somewhat inclement weather, we could still find our dinosaur tracks. On the way, we tried to drive to a well where St. Brendan had baptized people around 500 A.D. I learned that this is the same man who reportedly sailed across the Atlantic and discovered America long before Leif Ericson or Christopher Columbus. This was the first road in Ireland we failed to navigate. It was too rutted and wet to hazard driving on it so we turned around and headed back in search of the dinosaur tracks.

Success! We found the tracks. They were described as being tracks made by a tetrapod, which means "four feet". This lizardlike creature walked across the mud many years ago. The mud solidified to form rock and the tracks remain. They are described as being the earliest "in situ" tracks made by a vertebrate in the world. That's pretty impressive. I have a picture of the tracks on my Facebook page.

By this time, we needed to make our own tracks and get to our B&B on the Dingle Peninsula in the town of Dingle. We arrived shortly before 6 p.m. and checked in. Our rooms have the best view of the harbor and town. Too bad the weather is not cooperating. We're glad we are here for a long time because we can afford to have some rainy days.