Monday, July 22, 2013
Happy Birthday Mom!
Whilst driving through Australia, we saw these giant ant mounts everywhere. We finally stopped to photograph one today. Naturally, Kris also had to poke this with a stick.
We made it to the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse and saw where the Indian and Southern Ocean meet. Kris was sorely tempted to go for a swim so he could be in two oceans at once. Luckily, good sense beat his sense of misadventure this time.
 |
| Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse |
We grabbed a quick meat pie lunch from the Augusta Bakery before heading out on Caves Road.
While driving along Caves Road, you can't miss the utterly magnificent Karri Forest (a tall open forest of Eucalyptus diversicolor, one of the tallest hardwoods in the world). It is truly breathtaking.
 |
| Kris in the Karri Forest |
 |
| Random shelter in the forest |
 |
| Kristy in the karri forest |
Caves Road led to Lake Cave where we were able to tour a magnificent cave with a pretty remarkable suspended table. Our tour guide was Karen. She really was a great tour guide, but there were so many darn stairs!
 |
| Suspended table formation - it's actually suspended from the ceiling and not touching anything underneath. |
 |
| Water reflection |
 |
| A different view of the suspended columns with a water reflection. |
 |
| Some crazy organisms live in this water in the cave. So cool! |
 |
| Wet formation that looks like brain coral. |
After the cave, we visited and viewed the longest timber jetty in Australia at Busselton (1.7km long) but the underwater observatory was closed.
Our last campervan overnight was at Bunbury Glade Caravan Park. They had an impressive book exchange.
Tuesday - July 23 - 40 Days Down Under (Day 40)
We woke up and gave away trusty heater and extra blanket.
It was incredibly windy, but we still saw a few wild dolphins surfing and fishing at Koombana Bay
While on the road, I finished Beautiful Chaos by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. I found it to be very sad.
We checked into our last night's lodging, an AirBnB in a suburb of Perth. It was a separated area of a person's home. Very nice.
After dropping off our stuff, we explored Rockingham before returning the GoCampervan. It was a very windy day on the coast.
 |
| Of course we got ice cream! |
When we got to the GoCamper offices, we were in for a fun surprise... the GoCampervan people were out of the office and left no instructions on what to do. I had to call from the vet office next door.
I took photos of our receipts for refilling the petrol and the propane tanks and documented our returning the keys. We hopped on the bus and went to downtown Perth.
While in downtown Perth, we had our final dinner at Nando's. Kris got spicy paella.
We enjoyed Perth, but it started to rain. We hopped on the train and walked back to our AirBnB.
There was little sleep for the weary that night, as we had to repack and had a 5am flight.
One heck of a vacation!
