2003 letter about our adventures in Dunecht, Scotland: On Thursday morning, we left for Aberdeen. But we have to start much farther back than that.

First, let us say that we have had an astonishing run of luck recently. The leak seems to be fixed. The weather has been dry for quite a while. In fact it has been too dry and fields in Scotland actually are parched. And it has been cool in the northern parts where we have been so we did not suffer at all from the heat wave that affected many parts of Europe and the UK.

But the first lucky thing actually occurred June of 2002, when we were in the Bos Campground in Amsterdam. We were parked just across from this huge, beautiful Winnebago. Yes, an American made Winnebago. There was this guy in shorts sitting at a table in the sun. I (Ron) was in a folding chair in the shade. It was hot, and as the shade moved, I kept moving my chair back into it. This guy at the table just sat in the sunshine, head up, soaking up the rays. Every so often, he spoke to someone in the RV. At one point a couple came to visit them and they all sat around the table, speaking a language that sounded quite a bit like English at times. That was when we heard his great laughter for the first but not the last time. It was a rich, throaty laugh that made anyone within hearing distance feel much better about everything. I had to talk to Mike Donald.

It turned out that the language that was very like English that we heard was indeed English as spoken by Scots. Later Mike told a story about being in France and meeting an old French gentleman who was very friendly and spoke to him in English. At the end of the conversation, Mike congratulated him. "Sir, your English is very good." And the French gentleman replied, "So is yours".

We hit it off right away, and Adelle and I were introduced to his wife, Wilma, who hadn’t been outside because she wasn’t feeling well. But they invited us for a beer in their beautiful home on wheels. We have exchanged e-mails ever since. And we had an invitation to visit if we were ever in Scotland. So, we left Edinburgh for a village near Aberdeen where Mike & Wilma Donald live. Meeting the Donalds was the first of the lucky things that have happened.

To return to the subject at hand, both of us want to explain to all that we never had – nor can hope to have –any better time than we had with these two lovely, interesting, intelligent, generous, considerate and hospitable people. When you read the details of our visit, you’ll see that we aren’t even exaggerating.

We were thinking that we shouldn’t interfere too much with their usual life, so we were planning to join them Friday evening. We were encouraged by Mike over the phone to come on Thursday, since Mike wasn’t working on Friday, and we were all invited to a party at the home of a friend on Friday evening. He suggested that we meet him in a "lay-by" (i.e., a highway rest area) just outside Aberdeen, and then he would lead us home. We were there on time, and off we went, following Mike’s car into a beautiful rural area. In fact it was so lovely there that we agreed, sitting in our RV, that the scenery was so beautiful that it was too beautiful to leave to go anywhere else! We drove by field after field with huge rolls of straw, and saw crops of green and tan. We found out afterwards that the green that we didn’t recognize was mostly "neeps" (turnips) used to feed cattle in the winter, and that the short tan crop was what the Scots call corn – but is really oats. What we call corn is referred to as maize. We were able to recognize the fields of "tatties" (potatoes) without any outside help! Continued...................