We passed through Fort William, where I stopped at the Ben Nevis Distillery to pick up a bottle. The man at the visitor center was interested in where I was from, and it turned out that he has cousins living in Portland. Most locals I spoke to during the trip had only a hazy notion of where Portland (and indeed, Oregon) are. After that, we drove up the Great Glen to Fort Augustus, a thoroughly tourist trap of a town, and then on up to Inverness. Along the way we stopped to gaze upon Loch Ness, the children both hoping for a glimpse of the monster. Moments after I took this photograph, the fishing boat suddenly disappeared without trace!
After lunch in Inverness, at a wonderful pizza bar, we went grocery shopping at Marks & Spencer (lugging our shopping bags through downtown Inverness to the car park), filled up the tank ($185) and headed south down the A9 towards our next destination, just north of Dalwhinnie. We stopped off briefly to view the Culloden memorial, and to think about the people (some of whom were my ancestors) who died needlessly here. A curse upon the Young Pretender!
Apparently this barn was standing at the time of the battle, and survived intact.
