Mary Elmore, ’56, has dreamed of visiting Ireland for as long as she can remember.
“I’ve known a lot of wonderful people from Ireland all of my life,” she says. “My father loved Irish music, and I’ve always been interested in the culture.”
It’s a yearning she went on to share with her late husband before he died in 2020. They planned to visit the Emerald Isle together, Elmore says, though sadly, never got the chance.
But last May — at the venerable age of 91 — Elmore finally made the trek, and she’s so happy she did.
“It was the perfect trip,” she said of her experience with Michigan Alumni Travel. “I feel very fortunate that the group that I was with, we were all so compatible. The guides were excellent, the accommodations were good, the food was wonderful, and I learned a lot more about the history there.”
It was Elmore’s first time taking a trip with Michigan Alumni Travel, but she is far from a novice traveler. Residing in the Seattle area, she frequently travels alone to visit family and friends in the Midwest and on the East Coast. But for a more extensive trip abroad, she felt strongly that group travel through a reputable service was her best option.
“The last overseas trip I went on was when my husband and I went to Indonesia in the late ’90s,” she says. “I lived earlier in Ecuador, and I travel a lot in South America. I’ve been to Europe several times, so it’s not like I haven’t traveled, I just never got to Ireland; and at my age, I had to go with a group … I couldn’t go by myself.”
Joined by fellow alumni and alumni travelers from a few other universities, Elmore set out on a 13-day journey along Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way — a popular coastal route she says she always hoped to travel some day.
Considered the longest defined coastal road in the world, the more than 1,500-mile route hugs Ireland’s western shore and is breathtakingly scenic — spanning from the country’s northernmost point, at Malin Head, all the way down to the historic harbor town of Kinsale in the south.
Though Elmore’s trip didn’t follow the entire length of the Wild Atlantic Way, it included most of its best-known attractions, from the dramatic landscape of the Cliffs of Moher and Connemara to the rugged beauty of the Aran Islands and striking basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway.
“We had excellent guides giving us the history of Ireland, and there was a lot of culture. We had lectures on Irish art. We had recitals of their dancing and their music … it was a lovely trip,” she says. “It rained every day, but the rain did not bother me at all. I don’t think it bothered anybody.”
Elmore says she knew that a trip of this magnitude would be no easy feat at her age, so in preparation, she sought out a physical therapist to help her build up the stamina and strength to keep pace with the rest of the group.
“For me, the physical was harder than the mental,” she says. “But once I made up my mind to go, I just was determined that it would work.”
That determination paid off, and despite being older than her fellow travelers, she was able to keep up with the group just fine.
“In my room [in Ireland], I would do my physical therapy when I got up in the morning, and people in my group would say, ‘Wow, your physical therapist would be proud of you!’ Because I kept up with everybody.”
Elmore says while it was bittersweet checking Ireland off her bucket list without her husband, she has zero regrets about going.
“He would be very pleased that I went,” she says. “I met really nice, kind people. That — besides seeing a beautiful country and gaining a greater appreciation of its culture — made the trip truly meaningful.”
Jenny Sherman is a writer and copy editor for Michigan Alum.
