The Irish are quite a wonderful bunch we have not met one that was not friendly. All the food has been great, the beer as well. Ireland in general is a very beautiful country with plenty of sitka spruce and rocks. It was well worth the money that we spent to get over here and enjoy ourselves.

See you State side

Sean Dougherty
Trip Blogger

Scenes from Ireland:

Church

Sitka Spruce

We are flying back home and it will quite a sad, exciting, and long trip. The reason being is that we don�t want to leave but we miss our friends and family, and it is quite expensive to live here. The euro is about $1.40 USD that is not great for us.

• We are going to recover from the night before and Hopefully go see the Guiness factory and also everything else in Dublin that we have not seen.
• We will make it an early night just because we will be leaving early to catch the flight back home.

• Today we left Gallway at about 8:30am so that we could go back to Dublin.
• On the way we will go site seeing to the south of Gallway but I�m not really sure what or where will be going.
• We will get back in time to make a pub crawl around Dublin.

• We left Gallway so that we could see the state of the plantations on the west side of the country. Basically the soils are much poorer.
• On the way back we did see much of the coasts around Gallway, and they were quite an amazing site.
• We did get back today in time to do some exploring. We visited most of the shops within walking distance of the Hotel. If you ever manage to get into Gallway make a valid attempt to visit McDaugh�s it has really good fish and chips.
• Also nearly all the pubs have live music and every Irish person LOVES Johnny Cash and �Country Roads� by John Denver. They would blend in well with West Virginians.

• We left Dublin at 8:30 so that we could drive cross country to Gallway. While there we met with Teagasc. They are the equivalent to the USFS. They help farmers plant and mange their forests
• We also went to a site that they help manage sot that we could see the state of their forests.
• We got back Gallway in time to eat dinner and go to the Pub

Gallway pictures

• Today was quite busy
• We visited the Coillte forest operations and given the rundown on what forest operations take place in Ireland
• We visited Glendasloch an ancient Irish monastery received lessons in Gaelic
• We also visited the house of the unpronounced King of Ireland, Charles Stewart Parnell (He set in motion the liberating of Ireland from the British)
• Then we visited a logging operation
• We then visited forests that were heavily damaged by deer (Red Deer and Sika Deer cross)

All the food that we have eaten, that has any kind of Irish origin was really good.

Ireland Forest

Harvesting

• The morning began with a wonderful description of the History of Forestry in Ireland
• We learned the Itinerary for the rest of the week
• We gave three presentations on forestry in WV, WVU itself, and the WVU research forest given by Kate Piatek, Brian McDonald, and Bob Driscole respectively
• We were then given a tour of the University College Dublin campus by two of the forestry students
• When we got back we had fish and chip and went to bed by 9pm

• The day began promptly at 1pm
• We started by eating in the City Center, Dublin
• Then wandered around Dublin seeing Trinity College, one of the oldest in Ireland.
• Continued wandering and went to a souvenir shop and found a coffee shop
• We visited the Palace Bar which is one of the oldest pubs in Dublin, we had a pint.
• We then went to Gallagher�s Pub and the food was great, Murphy�s is not better than Guiness and Boxtys are really good.
• After dinner we further explored Dublin and shortly returned to the �Montage� or Montrose Hotel.

March 23

Left the US! (via Pittsburgh, Boston)

March 24

Landed in Dublin and proceeded to hotel check-in
Began exploration of Dublin and some of the forests that border
Viewed Irish peat fields
Saturday nights in Dublin you really need a reservation to eat in any local pub
We experience the nightlife as only Dublin can demonstrate (at Foggy Dew, O’Neils, and …)
Went to bed at about 2 am