Wrong photo

I intended to publish a photo of Ireland and accidently uploaded a photo of the ranch - Mark was spreading gravel on the driveway with a little bulldozer and we all had to play on it.

Here is a photo of Redwood Castle - also known as the Egan Castle. It's in County Clare near Portumna and near Birr. Our late chief, Michael J. Egan, a lawyer in Castlebar, bought it and restored it and held the first modern Egan Rally about 25 years ago. Ever since then, the Rally is held in Ireland every four years and somewhere else two years later. So far we've been to Austria with the German Egans (the vonEgans), Salt Lake City with the Mormon Egans, Annapolis with the Naval Egans, Melbourne with the Australian Egans. We hosted them in Dallas in 2006 and the next rally is to be held in Tasmania with the Devil Egans (sorry, couldn't resist).

My iPhone is fabulous but I'm on a learning curve about uploading pictures to my computer then finding the ones I want. I upload to Kodak Easyshare which collects them in date, but not time, order. In other words, I can find photos for June 26, but they are jumbled in time - with early morning photos mixed in with late night photos. And, on Easyshare, the photos aren't numbered which would make it easier to upload to the blog.

Anyway, this is Redwood Castle, still in the family of the late chief - and when in Ireland we've always held the final meeting of the Rally there. The castle is now party subsidized by the country and must be held open for visitors so many days a year. The sign outside invites people in for 6 euro.

Unfortunately, the heirs who own the castle now are not very family oriented. They charged the 85-95 people (relatives!) 20 euro to enter! Not only that, if anyone who didn't have 20 euro in cash for every person (including children) they were not allowed to pay by check or credit card! (Of course some Egan white knights stepped up to pay.)

To make matters even worse, no preparation was made for the people attending. Chairs were not set up and not enough were provided. Tea was offered with a few store-bought cookies.

We'll never go there again and recommend that no one else go, either.