Pilgramage To Scottish Tartans museum

**Jerry** · 1st May 06, 04:48 AM

This past weekend My wife and, I took a trip down to visit Matt at the Scottish Tartans museum, in Franklin NC. While there, I toured the museum, and placed my order for a 16oz Scottish handsewn Kilt in the ancient Macneil of Barra tartan and purchased a few other items including the kilt belt I'm wearing in the pic shown below. The museum isn't as large as I had imagined, but was very enjoyable and informative. The town of Franklin itself was very nice. I spent a good deal of Saturday there, kilted the whole time. No one even seemed to notice my kilt at all in any of the shops we visited. We left there and traveled bck east to Ashville, where we entered the Blue Ridge parkway and headed north towards Roanoke to visit my daughter. I had planned to take some pics of my wife and I along the parkway, but it was getting late Saturday, so we didn't stay at any of the overlooks long enough to haul out my tripod and set up the camera to take the picks. The pics were planned for yesterday (Sunday), but just after we started out, we got a phone call that one of our best friends had passed away unexpectedly, So we canceled the rest of the parkway drive and headed to Roanoke for lunch with my daughter before heading back home to Amelia county.
All in all, other than the passing of our friend, it was a great weekend. The only kilt comment I got was from a lady (appeared to be around 50 or so) at one of the visitor centers along the parkway . She said, "I love your kilt.:We had a nice discussion about Scottish and Irish heritage. She asked me about the term, Scotts Irish, and I explained that it really referred to the Scots who settled in Northern Ireland She replied that that confirmed what she had thought and that her family was from Northern Ireland also. We had to get back on the road, so we wished each other a good trip and went on our way.

**KiltedCodeWarrior** · 1st May 06, 07:11 AM

Congratulation on the trip. We would love to make it there this year. Maybe in the fall for the turning of the leaves. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a beautiful drive. We camped there a few years back at the only campground that is right on the Parkway. It was beautiful.

Sorry to hear about your friend.

**Southern Breeze** · 1st May 06, 07:23 AM

It sounds as if you had a great day. I've been to Frankin several times in the past, the latest being last June. It wasn't until I joined X-Marks that I found out about the Tartans Museum.