Seven Rainbow Day

In 2017, my daughter and I were able to go on a trip to Ireland. It was special in many ways.

1 - My daughter turned 18 in the air on the flight to Ireland. Because at least then their legal drinking age was 18, I was able to buy my daughter her first legal drink... twice (I got to do it again here when she turned 21.)

2 - Due to moving back to Birmingham in the middle of my daughter's junior year in high school, we decided that home-schooling her would be better than changing schools for that amount of time. That meant she wouldn't graduate in the traditional sense - no walking across a stage, getting handed a diploma (or piece of paper as a place-holder for the diploma), and moving her tassel from one side to the other.

When I was blessed with the resources to do this trip, I planned to hold a surprise graduation in Londonderry, a city in Northern Ireland where we have distant relatives. We were able to have it on a rooftop in the middle of the city and I live-streamed it (badly) back home so that friends and family could be a part. 

3 - We were huge Game of Thrones fans and, as anyone who watches Game of Thrones knows, a lot of it was filmed in Ireland. I opted to rent a car and travel a route that included most of the Irish Game of Throne filming sites.

(Note that this day was the same as the one for "Emerald Fields." It was a banner day for great photos!)

It was day three of our trip - and the day that we rented a tiny, red car that would take us along the upper half of Ireland, along the perimeter, and then cut back through the middle of the country.

Though Dublin was nice, I was ready to get into the country. The traffic was very, um, interesting there. Big double-decker tour busses shared the road with bikers, who swerved in an out of the vehicles. I know we were only there two days but I was very surprised we never saw an accident.

It's also amazing that we didn't have one, as Ireland is a country where the driving is done on the left side of the road. My daughter's job was to remind me if I pulled out of a cross-street and started to get in the right lane. She would yell, "Left! Left!" By the time we left Ireland, I was getting the hang of it, but it was a big learning curve after driving about 45 years the other way.

We also had fun stopping at convenience stores as we drove to see local offerings. However, one shocking scene was the rest stop that included a Burger King and a Subway.

Our goal that day was Tollymore Forest Park, which was the first of the Game of Thrones filming sites we would get to see. We had no idea at the time that the highlight of the day would turn out to be something very different.

We saw lots of sheep, a couple of castle ruins and gorgeous scenery that day. But nothing prepared us for the most unusual part of the day.

It was the day of seven rainbows. Yes, you heard me right. It seemed like every curse we went around, there was another rainbow. The first one was somewhat faint and because we were driving, I didn't even try to get a picture of it.

If I had known then that there would end up being seven, I would have documented every one - somehow.

It ended up that we only got photos of one of them - the last one and the most spectacular. The brightest, full-spectrum rainbow of them all was curved over a field of sheep. It was more than worth the time and energy to pull over and shoot what we could. 

If you've ever tried to take photos of a rainbow, you may know that they can disappear without warning. We didn't want to take the time to get out of the car, just in case, so everything we took was through the open window of that tiny automobile. (I'm very thankful for cropping so that you don't have to look at the window part that I couldn't zoom enough for it go away.)

It turned out that it stuck around long enough to find a spot where there was a lone sheep. As you probably can guess, it's my favorite.

It was a day we'll never forget... and it made me wonder if that's common there. Maybe that's where the "gold at the end of the rainbow" idea began.

                                                      (All images by Tracy Riggs Frontz)

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