Glenfinnan is a significant blah blah blah because it’s where Bonnie Prince Charlie blah blah blah during the Jacobite uprising of blah blah blah. More importantly, it’s also the landscape on which Hogwarts Castle (and the Hogwarts Express) is digitally superimposed for the Harry Potter movies.

You can take the American out of America, but you can’t …

Morar is well known for it’s sanded beaches — which are a bit of a rarity up here — but also because it’s the home to Morag, Scotland’s second favorite Loch moster after Nessie. Sighting of her are a bit less welcome by the locals, however, as legend says that a member of the local clan dies each time. I’m glad Nessie is so much more benevolent.

Given how the Donald clan is one of Scotland’s four largest, you’d think there would be a bit of an industry of places for expat MacDonalds to visit but — not so much.

The one big exception is Armandale Castle on Isle of Skye, where there is a Clad Donald museum and the ruins of very late (and questionably significant) family castle.

That aside, now that we are on the Isle, it’s hard to argue with beauty of the land that surrounds us.

Inverness was the one part of the trip that we just couldn’t really work into the plan. My mother’s Grandfather was born there, but it was so far north, not much to see, and not exactly the most scenic city of the lot.

Turns out we were wrong on the first part — once we got to where we were staying in Drumnadrochit, the innkeeper listed some places in Inverness as good dinner options, and said it was just under 30 minutes away.

So we drove in for a bit — nominally to find the Old High Church, which would have almost certainly been by Great Grandfather’s Church during his lifetime. We found it eventually (after a small detour to an unmarked neighboring church) and found some MacDonalds in the cemetary.

It’s nice going off the plan every once in a while.

My father had a grand total of one request on this trip — to see Loch Ness, something i was more than happy to do based solely on my favorite roller coaster ride of all time (the Loch Ness Monster at Busch Gardens Williamsburg).

Love it. Especially the part when we were sitting in Castle Urquhart’s orientation film and five minutes was dedicated to how the hated MacDonalds laid siege (like viking mercenaries!) to the beloved castle on the Loch, several times over the centuries.

I don’t remember hearing about that from my Grandmother.