Seen Along the A9: from Perth to Inverness

Screenshot of Google Maps: A9 from Perth to Inverness

When we went on holiday last week, we drove through a section of Scotland from Perth to Inverness. The road for this whole journey is the A9, a motorway with 2 lanes going each way.  As you can see from the map above, there are a few towns along the way, and a lot more small villages and open space.  As we drove, I made notes in my phone about what we were passing.

•  A sign advertising the Birnam Highland Games
• A House of Bruar mail-order warehouse. Unlike the Amazon.uk warehouse between Dundee and Edinburgh, this one looked like an oversize barn. Turns out House of Bruar is a company selling clothing and food "Scotland's Most Prestigious, Independent Store" according to the website.
• The Allium Garden Centre
• The Nae Limits Outdoor Centre
• Lots of Hills (maybe even could call them mountains)
• Trees
• Sheep
• More sheep - close sheep, and far sheep (Scotland wealth of animals grazing by the roadside demands precision: as we drive, Audrey and I comment, "Close sheep, Audrey's side!" "Far cows, Claire's side!")
• A sign advertising the Blair Castle Horse Show in late August
• A car shrine (an actual car) with a sign "Mrs, Ingram (?) murdered by (something/someone I couldn't read)
• More House of Bruar signage, located in the actual town of Bruar this time
• Stag Leaping signs (according to Google, they are actually "Caution Deer" signs. Paul and I were joking that they must have little signs in the woods "Caution, driving humans, next 3 miles. Watch for traffic." Surely Gary Larson has been to Scotland.)
• Rivers and Lochs
• Falling Rocks Next 7 Miles sign (or that was my interpretation)
• Sheep grazing about 10 feet from the road ("close sheep!")
• Two trains
• Two dead deer by the roadside
• A major sheep farm with hundreds of sheep grazing between the road and the train tracks 
• A small sign proclaiming "Nude Farm" (?)
• A TV repair shop called Telly on the Blink

Just to give you an idea of the trip, at one point Audrey, Claire and I were playing "I Spy."  We had to stop after a few rounds, first, because Claire, at not-quite-three, couldn't really play, but second, because we were running out of things to Spy.  You can only do "I spy with my little eye something that is Green" so many times (Tree? Bush? Grass? Hill? Moss?) Scotland, land of Green.

Caution Deer Sign