I had the great opportunity to learn from and know more about a great friend of the EMC, John Cohn, over the past several years.  One of the stories John shared to us a while ago told touched our hearts.  In short, pulled from his website, this is the short story:

Sam was an exuberant boy with a 1000 watt smile. He loved his friends, family, dog, and bird deeply. Sam was passionate about guitar, snowboarding, lacrosse, and having fun. Yes, having fun was important to Sam.

Springtime meant lacrosse for Sam and a time to play hard with his buddies. Ultimate frisbee at the park were memorable times for Sam and he would come home with a big smile on his face and grass stains on his body. Summers you could find Sam floating down the rivers, swinging from a rope swing, biking, or just hanging with friends. A summer would be complete with time spent at Camp Abnaki and jamming at Burlington Rock Camp. Fall would be the season Sam would try and stretch summer out a little bit more until the snow started to come. That time was then spent at Bolton Valley Resort on his snowboard. He enjoyed ariel tricks and hitting the rails. Mostly he enjoyed just hanging with his friends and little brother Gabe.

Sam loved music and was always plugged into some song. Guitar was second nature to Sam. He could play “Asturias” on his classical guitar to heavy metal on his Gibson. He enjoyed playing bass and wailing on the drums. His favorite times were when he would jamming with one of his friends, or his big brother Max.
It is hard to capture Sam’s true spirit in a few paragraphs. He taught us so much. Mostly he taught us to have fun, ease up, and to be there for each other. He is a true best friend to many and deeply missed.

Sam was born on May 28, 1992. He was hit by a car on November 20, 2006 in Florida while visiting friends. His beautiful body stayed strong long enough for organ donation. He gave his heart, liver, kidney, and kidney-pancreas so that four others would live. His spirit continues on through them and surrounds us today. Sam lived his life to its fullest on this planet.

To help with Sam's passing, John and his family create what are called SamStones.  Here's a short description, found on his website, of what they are:

SamStones are made with love by Sam’s friends and family. Our intent with these stones is to pass on some of that love.  If you have found a SamStone please feel free to keep it, move it or pass it on. We hope that you will pause and feel the love that is being passed on to you. 

If you would like to know more about Sam Stones, you can find out more here:  http://www.samestone.org/.  Corinn and I wanted to contribute, so we were given a bag of stones from Diane, John's wife, and will now bring them on our McBe Adventures.  My goal is to, as accurately as possible, track where I placed them with a photos of the location and to document that location within something like Google Maps.  So if you see future posts of SamStones, you'll know that we've traveled recently.  Below is our first map of where we placed many Sam Stones while in the UK.  Click on each marker, as the map is interactive, to learn more about the location we placed the stone and a short story of the site.  You can even change the terrain, move the map around, and zoom in and out!

Below are photos where we visited with Sam being part of the shots.  We tried placing Sam where we though he'd have a great view of the locations we visited.  Some shots were difficult to obtain while others we though were really great.  We figured this would be good to compliment the map above as a way to visually see more of where we traveled with him.  Hope you enjoy them! 

Today we awoke at our wonderful B&B, Ben Tianavaig, and to a yummy breakfast prepared for us by Bill and Charlotte, the owners.  Bill made introductions for us all around the room, and we were able to enjoy some pleasant conversation with our fellow guests.

Unfortunately these photos are a bit deceiving, while Ray has just recently taken them this evening, our morning weather was rainy.  Our original plan was to drive up the North East coast and take in the sites of the The Old Man of Stoor and Kilt Rock before heading over the Quiraing, a single-track road we've been told has wonderful views.  Bill informed us that what is true of the mainland Scottish weather, is also true on Skye, so just because it was raining in Portree didn't mean it was raining in the West.  So we cut the North East portion of our day trip out for now and headed for the West coast and Dunvegan Castle.  Dunvegan Castle has been home to the Chief of Clan MacLeod for over 800 years, and is (I believe) the oldest castle that is still inhabited. Once again, we were not able to take photos on the inside, but the castle houses many different pieces of the clan history, a facinating history and some killer views of Loch Dunvegan, which is really part of the sea. The Castle also has some extensive gardens, which we only had a brief opportunity to explore, before the Corinn-needs-feeding monster began to rear her head. So we opted for a take away lunch of sandwiches and headed down a very narrow, very busy single track road to find the coral beaches, not far from the Castle.  Well the drive was a bit harrowing, as it was my first single track road, and then the parking was a whole other experience, because we weren't the only ones with the same idea, but fortunately we had taken the full coverage out on the car, so parking in the mud and bushes seemed less of a concern than it might have otherwise.  I did fail to notice the "1 Mile to Coral Beach" sign we passed on our stroll out... and wondered why it took us so long to arrive... Can you see it off in the distance? And... because apparently we don't have cows in Vermont.... Ray took this photo.... The weather did improve, and we had a lovely drive home this evening.  Here is one of Ray's (very cool) HDR photos.... not sure what he does to make them, but I know he takes a series of 3 photos at different exposures?  Maybe?  And then somehow compiles them.  Any way he does it, they turn out AMAZINGLY!