riverECHO

16,023 kilometers around Australia

We drive barely two hours to Melbourne (southeast Australia) today to pick up my sister and her husband and Western Australia seems like ages ago. It’s hard to believe that we were there, 1800 miles away, just last week. Since our last post, we spent a couple more days in the town of Esperance, the highlight of our stay being a visit to Lucky Bay and climbing Frenchman Peak. At the summit a huge cave, called the “Eye,” looks out over the coast line. To everyone in Jackson, I think this climb was the equivalent of climbing about half way up Mt. Glory and the most vert we’ve hiked since we arrived in Australia. We are going to be in tears when we get to Jackson and back on our skis in January.

The much anticipated drive across the Nullarbor Plain was painless and, in fact, covered in trees. The road follows the southern coast of Australia, which in most places is one seamless cliff wall. We took a few detours on some not so well maintained roads to look out over the cliff edge and to the sea below. I’m not sure what made the drive go by so quickly but all of a sudden on Monday night we arrived in Adelaide where Christmas cheer was definitely in the air. Every RV and family size tent at our caravan park had twinkling lights and even full size Christmas trees. Other than a bright red $2 Christmas t-shirt that BJ found at a thrift store and a Christmas tree headband that I found at the grocery checkout, we felt a little unprepared.

For Christmas Eve and Day we splurged on a cottage in the shadows of Grampians National Park. The air is pleasant and cool up here and the rocky terrain and mountainous relief are a nice change. We spent Christmas morning (yesterday) reading, drinking coffee, and making heaps of phone calls to family in Idaho, Arizona, California, and North Carolina before whipping up somewhat disastrous eggs benedict (it tasted good, but didn’t look very pretty). A few rounds of coffee later we headed out to tour a couple of the top attractions in the Grampians, including a huge waterfall. When we returned “home” we were still bouncing with energy and decided to pick up a game of tennis at the on-site court. Neither BJ nor I have played tennis since P.E. in high school but the court and rackets were just sitting there beckoning us to give it a shot. The game was highly entertaining, especially since we were barefoot.

This Christmas has hit us harder than we were expecting. We definitely miss home and the feeling of being around family at this time of year and I can’t wait to pick up Shalyn and Randall this afternoon.  Everyone in Australia loves talking about plans for Chrissy. I can’t tell you how many people (including a number of grocery store clerks) asked us “So, what are you doing for Chrissy?” On behalf of Australia, Merry Chrissy!

Wishing all of our family and friends a very Merry Christmas!

We wrapped up a very short work week in two days and spent yesterday afternoon bustling around to get ready for our Christmas Eve dinner with Brad and Gretchen and a 4 day tramp along the Routeburn and Caples tracks. Four trips to the grocery store reminded us that Christmas Eve is not the ideal day to go shopping. While the boys spent three hours shuttling a car to the end of the track, Gretchen and I started on the apple pie. We prepared a small plate of appetizers and awaited the return of BJ and Brad before cooking salmon, cous cous, corn on the cob, and a loaf of bread. It wasn’t the most traditional of Christmas dinners, but it was a delicious summer meal. We spent the remainder of the evening eating pie (without the burnt edges) and ice cream, listening to the rain and enjoying the fact that we weren’t spending the night in a tent, looking at our mini Christmas tree and talking about how un-christmassy this year felt, and looking for a Christmas movie on TV but resorting to watching and falling asleep to Monster’s Inc. This morning we are packing our backpacks and getting excited to hit the trail for a few days. We’ll celebrate Christmas in our tents at Lake McKenzie eating fine morsels of freeze dried food and, of course, chocolate. We’ll be thinking about you on the trail and hope you all have a wonderful holiday.

It is very bazaar spending the week before Christmas in a place where the days are sunny, warm and light until after 10pm. This year we won’t be anticipating a white Christmas, seeing family, wrapping gifts, or eating hoards of food for days on end. Our roommate Ali decorated a small Christmas tree las t week but it actually surprises me every time I look at it. It doesn’t feel like Christmas at all. I feel spoiled that we were able to spend so much time with family and friends this year before we left and we’ll miss our annual visits to Buhl, Boise, Tempe, Sonoma, and San Francisco (where the rest of our family will be over the holiday). But we look forward to all of our visitors this coming spring…my dad and Fran in February, my mom and Steve in March, and BJ’s mom in April. This year we will be spending the holiday camping near the Milford Sound and on the Routeburn track with Brad and Gretchen. Instead of packing up gifts, we’ll be packing trail mix, chocolate bars, and freeze dried dinners.

We’ve been enjoying the late light nights in Queenstown, but last night we spent those light evening hours in two very dark places. We hopped in the car at 5pm and drove to Arrowtown, a funky little town about 10 minutes from Queenstown. After a short walk along a lupine-lined river’s edge we moseyed to the far corner of an underground bar we took note of a few days before. The bar, more like a wine cellar, served food from a neighboring restaurant and local beer and wine. The walls were finished with rough stone and mortar and lined with long stone benches covered with rugs and pillows. The décor included heavy leather chairs, overturned wine barrels as tables, and just enough candle light to notice the cobwebs in the corners. We ate a delicious lamb, mushroom, and blue cheese pizza and wet our palates with Montieth’s beer.

After dinner we ordered two coffees from the corner bakery and walked upstairs to the cinema where we had tickets to the evening showing of an indy film called “The Visitor.” The lobby of the cinema is part bookstore, part café, part wine bar. We’ll probably just come back to hang out in the lobby if nothing is playing. We were ushered into “the den” with one other person and had our selection of a huge velour sofa and a handful of comfy chairs. Worried we may fall asleep if we snuggled up on the couch, we chose two chairs in the front row. By the time we left the cinema the sun had set but the sky was still light. For those of you who are coming to visit us, I am sure we will be returning to the cinema in Arrowtown.