I'll begin the tale of this epic adventure with the planning process. As most of you who've read any of my blog know, I'm an Army Officer and a pretty good one if you believe my propaganda, I've been involved in planning military operations for 25 or so years but the unsung Operations Officer for this adventure was my wife. We actually started the planning about a year out while I was still deployed. By the time I returned home in July she was in full planning mode, our kitchen table looked like the Allied Operations Center in England shortly before D-Day - it stayed that way for much of the year.
The G-3 (Military lingo for the Operations Officer - in this case, my wife) began to develop the air movement tables (look at flights for cost and dates). After this experience, she probably knows as much about booking trips to Ireland as any travel agent in the world. She saved us about $500 a ticket on airfare just by tweaking the dates to the left a little (hours, not days). My sister-in-law bought the same tickets and spent considerably more because she couldn't get to the computer to book at the same time.
The G-3 and her sister spent innumerable hours on the phone looking at flights and drafting proposed itineraries. In February we had the supreme war council to settle on the itinerary. Being brave (foolhardy?), we decided to drive ourselves rather than participate in a group excursion. Once we had the dates for the trip and the places we wanted to see listed out, we began to lay out the route of March. Our plan was ambitious - we planned to travel to all four corners of the island and hit just about everything in between.
This map shows the major destinations and generally agreed upon route we planned to take:
The G-3 (Military lingo for the Operations Officer - in this case, my wife) began to develop the air movement tables (look at flights for cost and dates). After this experience, she probably knows as much about booking trips to Ireland as any travel agent in the world. She saved us about $500 a ticket on airfare just by tweaking the dates to the left a little (hours, not days). My sister-in-law bought the same tickets and spent considerably more because she couldn't get to the computer to book at the same time.
The G-3 and her sister spent innumerable hours on the phone looking at flights and drafting proposed itineraries. In February we had the supreme war council to settle on the itinerary. Being brave (foolhardy?), we decided to drive ourselves rather than participate in a group excursion. Once we had the dates for the trip and the places we wanted to see listed out, we began to lay out the route of March. Our plan was ambitious - we planned to travel to all four corners of the island and hit just about everything in between.
This map shows the major destinations and generally agreed upon route we planned to take:
Oh, one thing I left out, we were going to do all of that in about 10 days
