A Relaxing Weekend

No crazy adventures for us this weekend. Just a nice relaxing few days. Sorry no fun or interesting stories. Friday, we had our friends Kylee and Darren over for dinner and a late night of fun.

On Saturday, Justin had to work for a bit and then we went to Bob and Anne's for the AFL Grand Final. That is like the Super Bowl for Aussie Rules Football. I was cheering for Hawthorne Hawks since they were the underdogs and they won! After the game we had a nice time grilling out. It was a beautiful day too, about 85 degrees or so! I love that it is finally warming up!

Sunday, was nice and quiet. Justin bought a new boomerang. He bought one at Uluru, but it was made of MDF and after a day of throwing it, it broke in half. Then our friends bought him a new one for his birthday, but it was too pretty to throw, so we went out and bought one on Sunday. We headed down to the park so Justin could practice the art of throwing a boomerang. He actually is pretty good! When we get back home, you all can ask him to show you how he can throw it and it returns.

Other than that just hanging out and relaxing. On Wednesday night we head off to Cairns (pronounced Cans) to go to the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest! We are super excited. We wont' get back until October 6th Australia time. We miss you all!!

The Northern Territory: Uluru, Kata Tjuta, and Kings Canyon

So we are back from our first big trip! We traveled to the Northern Territory to visit Uluru, Kata Tjuta, and Kings Canyon. So here goes a brief overview....

This is us by our 4WD Nissan Patrol at Alice Spring Airport. The SUV was huge and it took diesel gas too! We were able to go on a 4WD track from Alice Springs to Kings Canyon. It was very bumpy, but fun nonetheless!

Our first stop on the way to Kings Canyon was Stanley Chasm. It was basically this huge chasm in between two mountains. It was really beautiful. At a certain time of day, the sun hits inside the chasm just right it is glows red. We were there too early to see that, but it was still beautiful!

This is a brumby or a wild horse. The are just a bunch of brumbies running around Australia! It was pretty cool to see. I never thought I would see a wild horse!

This is Redbank Gorge. Stop 2 on the way to Kings Canyon. It was essentially a giant gorge with a swimming hole. Justin, Rob, and Beth all took a nice dip in the water, but I am a wimp and just put my feet in. It was plenty cold!

While at Redbank Gorge we came up this little guy. A Black Footed Rock Wallaby. They are pretty shy and are hard to find in the wild, so we were really excited to see him!

This is Me, Rob, and Beth at the start of our Kings Canyon hike. There were tons of school groups out that day, so we had to deal with lots of people, but I didn't mind because it was so incredibly beautiful. It was like no other place I had been.

Here we are walking down a rocky trail. As you can see, the terrain and scenery are absolutely beautiful! It was pretty hot this day too, around 90 degrees!

Here is Justin at a lookout point.

This is all of us!

More beautiful scenery!

More scenery!

What is that I am pointing at you may ask, well let me tell you. Wild one humped camels! Yes, wild camels. Australia has the only wild one humped camels in the world. They were just hanging out on the side of the road. This was our third pack to see too!

This is Uluru. The famous big red rock at the center of Australia. It is a sacred site for the Aboriginal people. We were able to see it at both sunset and sunrise. This is at sunset. We honestly have like 20 photos of it to see how it changes colors. As the sun goes down and goes up it makes it really red.

We did a base walk around Uluru. This a picture of part of its base. It is about 5 miles around the base. It is crazy because every turn it looks completely different.

This is part of Uluru called the whale. Can you see the whale face? It has a little eye and a big mouth.

More of the unique rock of Uluru. By the way it is made of sandstone.

Now we are at Kata Tjuta. It is another sacred Aboriginal site. It is so sacred we aren't even allowed to hike around the base. Kata Tjuta is made up of 36 rock domes made of conglomerate.

We did a trail called the Valley of the Winds and this is looking through two of the rock mounds.

More of our hike.

This is Kata Tjuta as sunset. It was really beautiful to watch it turn red.

Well, that is our trip in a nutshell. It was amazing and we had the time of our lives. Justin was happy because we saw brumbies, camels, wallabies, dingoes, lizards, and crazy birds. Yes, we did see dingoes. They were hanging around our campsites. They looked just like dogs. It was a trip of a lifetime. And now next week we are off to the Great Barrier Reef! We miss you all!

A Taste of Spring

Justin and I had our first taste of spring this weekend. We celebrated Justin's birthday this past weekend, since this weekend we will be on our trip. On Friday we went out to dinner at a pizza place we have been wanting to try for a long time. It was delicious! The best pizza I have had so far in Australia. We even got a table outside to enjoy the nice weather!

On Saturday, we spent all day planning our Tasmania trip in December/January with Jenny and Ben (Justin's sister and husband). Tasmania is pretty much empty all year long except the exact dates we will be there! Every single hotel is booked in Hobart the nights we want to be there because the Sydney to Hobart yacht race is on and a big festival of some sort is on as well. We did find a nice hostel to stay at so it wasn't too bad. And we got the very last camp site at one of the national parks we are going too! Overall, it took almost 4 hours to get everything book and finalized, but we did it!

After our brains were fried from planning, we headed out to the beach. We took the train to a place called Brighton Beach and walked along the beach to another beach area called Glenelg. It was about an hour long walk and it was beautiful because it was at sunset! Seeing the sunset over the ocean on a beautiful day is something I could get used to! It was a nice and relaxing evening at home!

So this weekend was pretty laid back, since on Thursday we will be heading off to Alice Springs for our big trip to the Outback! We are really excited since this will be our first taste of interstate travel and seeing a real Australian icon...Uluru (Ayers Rock). So be looking our for pictures next week! We miss you all!!

The Royal Adelaide Show

Welcome to the Show!

Show Bags! Bags of junk to buy!

Justin and Bob. Justin is eating a Dagwood Dog which is essentially a corn dog! They are way better than the Corny Dogs at the State Fair of Texas.

This was the grand parade with all of the animals going around the oval.

Wood chopping competition! At the end of the day there was going to be an Australia vs. New Zealand competition. There was even a competitor from the States!

Alpacas. We thought they looked like they were posing for the pictures!

In one of the arenas they had all of the prize winning food. I thought it was kinda interesting that they had it all on display. It all looked really yummy!

This is Justin enjoying a tofee apple. The toffee apple had a candy coating around it and it was kinda crystallized. Very yummy!

This is the old Ferris wheel that has been at the Show forever. It is the only ride that doesn't get taken away when the Show is over.

Can you guess what Fairy Floss is?? Cotton Candy! I think Fairy Floss is such a funny name!

This past weekend we headed off to the Royal Adelaide Show with Bob and Anne (Justin's boss and his wife). It is pretty much the equivalent to the state fairs in the U.S. with lots of fattening food, rides, and animals. It was fun! It was the most beautiful day we could have asked for too. It was about 70 degrees which was the warmest day in 3 months! We got there nice and early even before the gates were open. Bob and Anne had a plan for us so we just followed along! The most interesting thing we saw which I hadn't seen before was wood chopping. There were a bunch of guys who were in competition to cut wood. It was pretty intense. These guys meant business and they were really good too! Another highlight of the day were the show bags. These are bags that are put together with candy, toys, and other "junk" and sold at a cheap price. Justin and I each got a show bag, both Cadbury ones. Cadbury chocolate here is a million times better than Hershey's back in the states. I got a Carmello Koala show bag and Justin got just a basic Cadbury show bag. We ended up leaving the show around 3:30 or so and we had a full day! It was a lot of fun!

Other than the show, we went to watch our church's basketball finals with some friends and then on Sunday we went over to Bob and Anne's for Father's Day (it was on Sunday here) and had a bar-b-que. So it was a fun and eventful weekend! In about two weeks we head off to Uluru! We miss you all!!

Road Trip.....Naracoorte Caves and Coorong National Park!

This is along the rim of a lake in Coorong National Park. It was all white and milky looking. We thought it was because it was salt from the ocean leaking through the earth. The ocean is just on the other side of the tree line.

This is on the way back from what was supposed to be a pelican observatory, but since we were there in the winter it was pelican-less. It was super windy and rainy on the way to the lookout!

This is a side stop in a small town called Robe. We were told there would be tons to do, but since it is winter the town was dead. We pretty much took this picture and left. Yet again, super windy, rainy, and cold!

Ah, the Big Lobster. One of the many "big" items Australia has to offer. We now have seen the big lobster, the big rocking horse, and the big orange.

Amazing sunset over the ocean in a town called Cape Jaffa. We believe the only resident is a golden retriever. We saw no signs of life there.

Kangaroo and Wombat crossing! Watch out! We saw two dead roos and two dead wombats on our drive.

Justin by "Granite Rocks". They are those brown rocks in the ocean. This place was yet again, cold, rainy, and super windy!

Nararcoort Caves. It is a World Heritage Site. There are a total of around 800 World Heritage sites around the world including cultural, natural, and a mixture of both. There are about 18 just in Australia. A World Heritage site is a palce that is unique and can be found no where else in the world. Other ones in Australia include, the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru, the Daintree Rainforest, the Sydney Opera House, and the Tasmanian Wilderness just to name a few. These are the ones Justin and I are going to!

Inside the cave! This was my very first cave to ever go it so it was really exciting. The stalactites are on the top and the stalagmites are on the bottom (I think).

More cave.

More cave.

This is why the caves are a World Heritage Site. The fossils! They have found really, really old fossils here that date back like forever ago. They were really well preserved because of the sediment and mud.

This is Justin by a giant wombat type creature. They found its fossils in the caves and it really was that big! I think it is kinda cute!

This is me going into to Wet Cave, it was a self-guided tour and not nearly as cool as the other ones, but still cool.

This is inside wet cave.

Me by the entrance to the Cave.

Justin having some fun with the fossils.


So as you can see from our pictures it was a road trip weekend! We headed down to the Limestone Coast which was about 3 and a half hours from Adelaide. We hired a car and set off on Friday night. The car was a manual! It is really hard making your brain use your left hand to shift. Justin got really good at it, I still made some revving noises and almost killed it a few times. We stayed the night in Naracoorte on Friday and on Saturday we spent most of the day exploring the caves. Then we were heading to Kingston for Saturday night. We went through the Coonawara wine region and Justin did a little wine tasting. We stopped by two small towns we were told were pretty nice, but I swear small towns in the winter no one goes outside. It was like we were in ghost towns. No one out. The shops closed. On a Saturday afternoon. We finally made it to Kingston. Semi-ghost town, but not as bad as the other ones. We searched for a place for dinner and there were only two places to choose from. We chose a fish and chips shop. There was nothing to do that night so we sat in our motel room and watched TV. Yay for us!

We woke up the next day to drive through Coorong National Park. It was pretty nice except it was really windy, cold, and rainy. We did enjoy seeing all of the scenery though. On the way home Justin wanted to stop through Hahdorf the German town we visited a few months ago because he was craving German sausage. So he got some sausage and Bavarian mustard and we were on our way.

Overall it was a pretty nice weekend and it was nice getting out of Adelaide since we hadn't been anywhere in a long time! We need to go back during the summer when it sounds like things are a bit more hopping. This weekend we are going to The Show. It is essentially the state fair. We are pretty excited! We miss you all! Oh, and we hope you all enjoyed Labor Day. Australia's Labor Day is in September and that is when we are going to Cairns!