First Day on the Road

Dear Adventurous Reader,

We have come a long way since we left home. Further than we might have if a few things had not taken our attention.

Tree Top Adventure

First we headed in land to visit a Tree Top Walk. It was fascinating to see how the trees changes as we walked down hill to the forest floor. Huge trees surrounding us, reaching and competing for the light creating a vast canopy towering over us. The Trees that covered us created a vast forest floor, with ferns and damp bushes that smelt wonderful.

From the forest floor we walked along the tree top walk, standing high above the ground on a metal walkway, looking below to the ferns and above and across to the trees that once covered us below.

The boys walked along the metal walkway not phased by the height, looking for places to go higher. The steps to the top of the canopy was ascended with impatience and once conquered it was down to the bottom again. Sometimes youthfulness is about being first and watching the losers loose, not about enjoying the view when you get there.

We sat in the car park of the tree top adventure upon mats and dined on the finest cut veggies, rice cakes, tuna, and salami sandwiches.

Spooking

Driving is fun, I enjoy it a lot. But for the other people in the car it can get boring, hot and sick-inducing. Twisty roads at high speeds, narrow dips and furrows in the road and the warm sun baking the back of a van is a perfect recipe for car sickness. (Un)Luckily the Great Ocean Road is all of those things.

Poor Joash found himself feeling ill when we stopped for petrol at Warrnambool. His face turned sour, like his tummy and with a quick word of encouragement found his way outside before he was "Actual Travel Sick".

He told our traveling companion, Jenn, that he had just "spooked" while he held the Encouragement Ice Cream she had just bought for him. She asked him what he had said. "I spooked. But I got out of the car in time." Car sickness through the eyes of youth.

Camping

We set up camp between the trees in a camping ground that was not planned. It was unplanned because of the distance of the Great Ocean Road and the stops that we had.

It was a nice camping spot. The bugs we had collected on the windscreen driving in were at the camp when we first arrive but were blown away by a steady wind that came with a cool change.

The tent was setup in the wild for the first time. The boys were fed by The Amazing Jenn, who prepared food while we put up tents. And after the boys were put to bed we sat out under a darkened sky to talk about our day and previous adventures.