Back to Blogging!

After a MASSIVE break from blogging over the last few months I am finally back! We have had an insanely busy summer and early fall and I feel like I have to catch you up on so much!

Sydney is almost 8 months old now and she is turning into a little girl before our eyes. She is army crawling around the house like she has been doing it her entire life and never stops eating. David is working hard in his new position at ATCO. He is working shift work now (including nights) and we have been working hard to adjust to our new schedule. I finished planning my kids Triathlon and everything went off without a hitch (maybe just a few hiccups). I have been making an effort to enjoy every minute of my maternity leave and have been busy completing the pile of projects that I had started at the beginning of the summer.

We have been travelling non-stop and have spent many Sunday mornings at races supporting friends. We managed to squeeze in a trip to Penticton to watch friends compete in Ironman at the end of August and just recently returned from a road trip to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore. We have one last road trip to Calgary this week and then we can finally settle down for a month and a half or so.

Here are a few pictures from the last few months:

More regular blog posts to come soon!

S

Katoomba at Last

We are finally here! After a twelve hour bus ride and a two hour train from Sydney we finally got into katoomban in the blue mountains today.

On our bus ride we didn't really sleep and there obviously was not much to see as it was night. The most exciting thing we did see was two cane field fires. After a cane field has been harvested the farmers will burn off all of the remaning "garbage" by lighting the fields at night. The result is a spectacular sight of red and orange that can be see from miles away.

Sydney's First Flight

Well, as expected, Syd rocked her first plane ride. We were dropped off at the airport in Edmonton by David's mom and check in was a breeze. We have always been light packers and we managed to pack everyhing in one small overnight rolling bag, a backpack and a diaper bag.

We managed to snag three seats to ourselves in the back of the plane.

In The Middle of Our Overnight to Sydney

We are in the middle of our overnight bus trip to Sydney from Byron. We are in a town called grafton in the middle of the coast. We left Byron at 6:30pm and we are expected to arrive at the same time in the morning. It is 9:00pm right now and I am already ready for it to be over.

Leaving the beach today was the hardest thing we have had to do. We biked up to the lighthouse this morning and saw two pods of dolphins on our walk. It was beautiful! Yesterday we spent all day boggie boarding on the beach and working on our tans.

The Australian beach life has suited us well over the last two months and we will miss it so much! But for now it is back to the bus and our movie (a league of their own) before we attempt to get some sleep.

More from our final destination later!

D&S

Last Day in the North

We woke up this morning in Port Douglas and after a quick breakfast we hopped in the car to head back to cairns. The drive back was beautiful and the weather could not have been any better. We drove into the city and went straight to an outlet mall to shop for a while. After buying a few things we drove down to the shop to where David bought his digeridoo to pack up and ship the didge home. The box was big enough to fit a bunch of clothing in and the minimum weight we could pay for was 6kg so with stuffed the box with as much as we could. It was a good thing we got rid of as much as we could because there is no way we would be able to get everything home!

We went down to the lagoon for an afternoon swim and a nap on the grass and after a few hours we finally checked into the hostel. We unloaded the entire car into our room and spent the next hour trying to fit everything into the bags. We managed to fit everything into our day packs, our big packs, a postage box and a small duffle bag that a had to buy. Hopefully the airline let's us take it all on!

For now it's off to bed after watching flashforward (our favourite new show!) and then we are up for 4am... Yikes! Off to the airport for our flight to Brisbane and then our bus ride to Byron bay.

More later!

D&S

Longest travel day yet. Cairns to Byron bay

Cairns

Today started with a 4 am wake up call. We returned the car, got into a cab and were off to the airport. One of our biggest concerns was luggage weight. We were allowed 46kg total and had 47kg. The 6am flight was fairly full and took 2 hours.

Brisbane

25C at 845 when we got into downtown Brisbane. We had 3 hours to kill until our bus left for Byron bay. We had found out that the Brisbane YHA hostel was close and we could leave our bags there for a couple of hours. We were told it was 500m away. We soon found out that 500m meant 1km mostly uphill with 47kg of bags. Long story short we wasted about an hour and got absoutely nothing done.

We just boarded the noon bus to Byron bay and the trip will take just over 4 hours. If we would have drove ourselves from the airport we could have been in Byron bay at about the time our bus left for brisbane.

Should be there soon but for now it's time for a nap.

D&S

Beautiful Byron Bay

Byron Bay is going into our top three places to visit in Australia and we knew it would. From the beginning of our trip and even before we left everyone has said that we would love it here. Byron is a super laid back town that was super quiet until surfers discovered that it had some amazing surf beaches. From that point on it has been a really popular spot.

The whole town has a very hippie vibe and it feels as though the entire place has been frozen in time in the sixties or seventies. Shops are filled with hemp clothing and organic foods and there are a ton if meal options for vegetarians (yay!).

David rented a surf board for two days and we have pretty much spent every waking moment on the beach. The beach is massive and gorgeous and the water is so clear. There is a beautiful lighthouse on the top of the hill overlooking the beach and we were told that it has a range if 42km.

Days are lazy here and it easy to get drawn into staying longer. We even cancelled one of our nights in the blue mountains so we can stay an extra night. I think if we had more time we would never leave. There are jobs for travellers everwhere and we are constantly bumping into people who came for a visit and just never left.

It is going to be hard to leave Byron and even harder to leave australia. We only have five more nights in this incredible country and we plan on making the most of them.

Home soon!

D&S