On the Road Again....
We have our backpacking faces back on and we are officially traveling again! For those of you who might have thought we fell off the bottom of the earth because we haven't blogged for over a month...well, we haven't, we've just been having too much fun.
Since we last wrote we packed up our little flat in Nelson, New Zealand and flew to Australia. Before we left we had a whirlwind week of packing, cleaning, finishing jobs (Amy's job, that is, as Travis already retired), and enjoying an overnight sea kayaking trip north of Nelson in Abel Tasman National Park. The kayaking was particularly awesome: Beautiful sea, picturesque beaches, an incredible seaside campsite to ourselves, and we even saw some stingrays.
In two weeks in Australia we've had fun exploring Melbourne and the state of Victoria. In Melbourne, we saw a great museum and enjoyed some good culture, staying with Amy's old friend Jesse, who she worked with at summer camp years ago.
We were lucky enough to see a "Footy" (Australian Football) game live. The game is kind of like rugby, and is very fast and exciting. We're happy to report that we stayed for three of the four quarters before walking into town and viewing "The Queen" on bigscreen. It's a good flick, but she's definitely not as pious as Grandmom. While sitting on a dock in Geelong, we witnessed three wedding parties taking photos by the sea whilst two youngsters jumped off the pier next to them but a yard away, narrowly avoiding disaster with each splash.
We then prepared for the Great Ocean Road Adventure Race, where Travis competed and Amy crewed. We both had a fun time and a memorable experience. Travis spent five days running, biking, orienteering, and kayaking in some very neat areas including rainforests, beaches, mountains, and plains. Amy's job on crew was probably tougher than racing, as she drove the rented campervan from transition to transition at full speed in order to make it on time, only to arrive, hurredly unpack, wait, wait some more, put up with the team as they rushed through transition and trashed everything, only to rush to the next transition to stay up all night waiting again, making soup (which burned in the process of waiting), etc, etc. At one point, Amy and Jan (her crew partner) waited at a transition from 5am to 4:50pm, at which point Travis and Kim (his teammate) road in with 10 minutes to spare before the cutoff! In general, the experience was pretty "full-on," as they say here, and photos should be online at www.greatoceanroadrace.com soon (we were team #17, Keen 4 Adventure). Particularly gripping in this race were the huge waves on the sea kayaking sections, which flipped many a boat and sent some kayaks crashing into rocky cliffs where they smashed to pieces. Luckily, Travis has tons of experience in these conditions from training in Colorado...psyche! He did amazingly make it through OK, thanks primarily to Kim's instuction. They also saw glow worms while trekking at night, which was neat. Plus, they only saw two deadly snakes throughout the race, one a good six feet long and one small one that Travis almost stepped on. Travis and Kim finished 2nd in the coed division.
We've had some great animal experiences here. We've seen Koalas (which are not bears and are closely related to wombats, the only other marsupial with a rear-opening pouch). Kangaroos are common, as are wallabees (small and kangaroo-like) and many interesting parrots. At a game reserve, we saw flying foxes, which are huge bats that really look like foxes with wings and echidnas, which are one of two egg-laying mammal spieces, the other being platypuses.
We're on the way back to Melbourne for a couple of days and will then fly back to Christchurch, NZ. We'll meet Travis' parents and sister there and travel for a week in the Little Prince. Then we have one more week in NZ to sell the car before flying back to Australia, where we plan on road-tripping from Cairns to Sydney.
We're still loving life and each other, and we're really excited to see Trav's family!
Hope you're doing great, and see ya later!
Since we last wrote we packed up our little flat in Nelson, New Zealand and flew to Australia. Before we left we had a whirlwind week of packing, cleaning, finishing jobs (Amy's job, that is, as Travis already retired), and enjoying an overnight sea kayaking trip north of Nelson in Abel Tasman National Park. The kayaking was particularly awesome: Beautiful sea, picturesque beaches, an incredible seaside campsite to ourselves, and we even saw some stingrays.
In two weeks in Australia we've had fun exploring Melbourne and the state of Victoria. In Melbourne, we saw a great museum and enjoyed some good culture, staying with Amy's old friend Jesse, who she worked with at summer camp years ago.
We were lucky enough to see a "Footy" (Australian Football) game live. The game is kind of like rugby, and is very fast and exciting. We're happy to report that we stayed for three of the four quarters before walking into town and viewing "The Queen" on bigscreen. It's a good flick, but she's definitely not as pious as Grandmom. While sitting on a dock in Geelong, we witnessed three wedding parties taking photos by the sea whilst two youngsters jumped off the pier next to them but a yard away, narrowly avoiding disaster with each splash.
We then prepared for the Great Ocean Road Adventure Race, where Travis competed and Amy crewed. We both had a fun time and a memorable experience. Travis spent five days running, biking, orienteering, and kayaking in some very neat areas including rainforests, beaches, mountains, and plains. Amy's job on crew was probably tougher than racing, as she drove the rented campervan from transition to transition at full speed in order to make it on time, only to arrive, hurredly unpack, wait, wait some more, put up with the team as they rushed through transition and trashed everything, only to rush to the next transition to stay up all night waiting again, making soup (which burned in the process of waiting), etc, etc. At one point, Amy and Jan (her crew partner) waited at a transition from 5am to 4:50pm, at which point Travis and Kim (his teammate) road in with 10 minutes to spare before the cutoff! In general, the experience was pretty "full-on," as they say here, and photos should be online at www.greatoceanroadrace.com soon (we were team #17, Keen 4 Adventure). Particularly gripping in this race were the huge waves on the sea kayaking sections, which flipped many a boat and sent some kayaks crashing into rocky cliffs where they smashed to pieces. Luckily, Travis has tons of experience in these conditions from training in Colorado...psyche! He did amazingly make it through OK, thanks primarily to Kim's instuction. They also saw glow worms while trekking at night, which was neat. Plus, they only saw two deadly snakes throughout the race, one a good six feet long and one small one that Travis almost stepped on. Travis and Kim finished 2nd in the coed division.
We've had some great animal experiences here. We've seen Koalas (which are not bears and are closely related to wombats, the only other marsupial with a rear-opening pouch). Kangaroos are common, as are wallabees (small and kangaroo-like) and many interesting parrots. At a game reserve, we saw flying foxes, which are huge bats that really look like foxes with wings and echidnas, which are one of two egg-laying mammal spieces, the other being platypuses.
We're on the way back to Melbourne for a couple of days and will then fly back to Christchurch, NZ. We'll meet Travis' parents and sister there and travel for a week in the Little Prince. Then we have one more week in NZ to sell the car before flying back to Australia, where we plan on road-tripping from Cairns to Sydney.
We're still loving life and each other, and we're really excited to see Trav's family!
Hope you're doing great, and see ya later!
posted by Amy and Trav at 4:35 PM
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