Of Kilts and Haggis: Of Loch Ness

Yesterday, a group of us JSAs and full-time students took a university-sponsored day trip up into the southern Highlands to see, among other things, Loch Ness.
Our trip began at 8am, but since all of my friends and I live in DRA, we had to wake up significantly earlier as it's about a 20 minute walk into town from here. So, waking up in darkness, the 10 or so of us walked into town and boarded our bus (run by Haggis Tours - 'Wild and Sexy') and commandeered the back of the bus. Everyone on the bus was a St Andrews student, but since the bus fit about 40 people, we made up over a fourth of it and were easily the most obnoxious people there, besides our driver Tony, an Italian Scot very knowledgeable about Scottish history.

Dunkeld Cathedral

Our first stop was Dunkeld ('Fort Keld'). Dunkeld is the sight of Birnam Wood, made famous by Shakespeare's Scottish play, in which it was told Macbeth that he would be king until the trees of Birnam Wood "remove to Dunsinane." We stayed there for about 30 minutes, got a look at the cathedral and the River Tay and then moved on.
At this point it was still sunny, but as we drove further north, clouds moved in and our bus was subject to bouts of snow and rain. Despite this and his constant warnings to us that some of the roads we would be taking might be closed, Tony only drove the bus with one hand while he fiddled with the CDs or told us more Scottish lore through the malfunctioning microphone or tried to fix the defroster.
All was fine in the end, though.

Our Tour Bus

From Dunkeld we made several stops along the mountain roads to get a look at the views or explore paths leading to rivers and streams that eventually wend their way to one or more of the 30,000 bodies of water in Scotland. It was commented at one point that the water looks like Guinness, which it does. This is because of a root that, with each passing rainfall, leaks into the water and stains it with this very dark brown color that, I think, looks like Guinness.
Eventually, after passing through Birnam Wood, a few towns, and the mountainous highlands, we arrived at Fort Augustus, situated at the southwest end of the famous loch.
It was beautiful there.
We purchased our £11 Loch Ness cruise tickets. When we hopped on board the boat, it was overcast. But, as we pulled out into the loch itself, the sun appeared, followed quickly by snow.

A dammed up loch on one of our many stops up

As soon as we were in the middle of the Loch, an electronic voice began to speak at us, telling us all the facts about the lake, how deep it is at its deepest (over 800 feet – prime depth for a monster, I'd say), how it was formed (by a glacier, one of three lochs formed that way), and various other bits of history, including the caves in which outlaws hid centuries ago. Unfortunately, we saw no monster (our tour was only an hour so we didn't see the whole loch. I think Nessie might have been hiding the the incredibly dark cloud about 100 yards in front of us when we turned back), even when we tried to lure it out with an apple and then a cookie.