On today’s excursions, we had the pleasure of visiting the famous Titanic museum in Belfast. It was super crowed, but it had great detail of facts that I had never heard before regarding the Titanic and her shipwreck. The museum also went into tremendous detail on how Belfast became such a large city and harbor as well. It all started when the potato famine drove families away from their farms, and towards the city to find new work. Woman, children, and men all needed to find jobs in the city, thus making the textile industry expand at an exponential rate. With a big industry in a rapidly growing town, comes the need to be able to trade, thus creating the need for a port. And so the Belfast port was born.

And with a large port system, and workers ready for a job to accomplish, the Titanic was born. Below you will see the location this hard work took place.

Now we all know how this story turns out, but it was some of the smaller details that made an impression on me. As one might expect, a pair of binoculars would be ideal for any traveling person. You never know what you might want to see from a distance: a fox, a hedgehog, maybe a pod of dolphins jumping out of the water illuminated by the setting sun, or perhaps an iceberg. Yes, a crew member by the name of David Blair transferred to being a Second Officer on the Oceanic, and in the midst of his quick departure, he had accidentally took the key to the storage locker containing the binoculars with him. Those would have been the pair used by the lookouts.

Another interesting tidbit is that the Captain of the Titanic knew that the waters in which they traveled were icy, and he was even advised to lower his speed. A ship passing through the same area earlier that very day reported that they would be among icebergs. However, the Captain refused to reduce speed. By the time the iceberg was spotted, they were traveling too fast to stop before they would strike it.

And did you know there were dogs aboard the Titanic? Twelve, to be exact. But only three would survive the journey.

Above is a picture of the Titanic still in the building stages of its life.

Altogether, the museum was very interesting and I learned quite a lot about the fateful shipwreck.

In the afternoon, we traveled to Dromore to check in for the World Sheepdog Trials and gather for the parade.

My first impression of field one, and I think a lot can agree on this, was ‘wow.’ 80 acres of a beautiful green pasture, sheep placed in the distance grazing peacefully, sun shining brightly above, and that is where the World Sheepdog Trial will commence.

But I couldn’t stare for too long it was time for the parade to begin.

Here is four of us from Team USA before the parade, Lise Anderson, me, Barbara Ray, and Marianna Schreeder.

The parade itself was fun, teams lined the lane, carrying their flags and talking amongst themselves and taking pictures as well.

I do not know the number of handlers and their dogs that lined up today in the field, but it was impressive. And all are about to compete for the same title: World Champion.

Let the trials commence!