You take the high road and we'll take the low road and we'll get to Scotland afore ye.

Little patches of sunshine were peeking through this morning as we strolled around Moffat before breakfast. Michael made fast friends with the Singing Potter who had once seen Jesus and tried to convince Michael to be born again. Then after a cheery stroll through the cemetery, we settled in for breakfast. Michael tried haggis again (not as enamored this morning) but passed on the blood pudding (against the waitress' strong protests).
Sadly once we headed north again the sun patches became fewer and further between such that by the time we arrived to tour Stirling Castle the weather had gotten decidedly wet, windy and dreary. But the castle tour reminds me that I wanted to mention a quaint little invention that was illustrated on our tour of the Royal Crescent in Bath....the turnspit dog. It seems that back in the day, rather than turning the spit in the fire in the kitchen of the mansion by hand.....they bred short legged little dogs to run inside a wheel (very much like a hamster or a gerbil would but on a larger scale) that turned the spit to roast the meat. I wonder if you could get away with that today and claim the dog was serving as some sort of canine companion.....
Anyway, back to today. After the tour at Stirling and a quick bite in a nearby pub, we set off for the last leg of our driving journey. Just when we were seeing some lovely blue skies peaking through the clouds again, everything turned dark white and we found ourselves in a bit of a snow storm heading over the pass. On the up side, the white background did make it easy to spot 9 or 10 different grouse flying about. And we were fortunate enough to see several herds of deer with the last group moving close enough to the road for Michael to jump out in the blizzard to snap a few pictures. Five large males were on the down side of the road while this one big guy was walking behind a (his) bunch of females. (Please note the snow.)