Oh, the places you'll go!

.... and be exhausted.
but in a very good way mind you, though exhausted none the less.  With a migraine from travel and not yet the ability to sleep I sit down to blog for you, and now with fancy-dancy new-fangled techni-color pictures!

Those little rocky do-da's are the lovely Three Sisters of the Blue Mountains, blue because in the heat the gum trees give off something that makes the haze blue, I could google it to get specifics, but so could you.

So before heading up to the blue mountains, we celebrated a holiday I am now quite fond of: Australia Day.  Kind of like the 4th of July where not much is celebrated but summer through cook outs, going out on the lake, the flag printed on things that it doesn't really belong on, and drinking.  We spent the day out on the river (salt water, it flows right in from the ocean) and it was fantastic.  The boat had no seats because well, they tore out the seats. to make room for dive gear, so when we were going fast, and over decently sized waves and wake you stood at the front holding onto the windscreen and trying not to crack your chin open on it.  It was of course incredible and felt like you were riding a dolphin when you got your knees bending on the right intervals.  We had lunch, swam, saw some giant lizard beasts, and generally soaked up some much needed vitamin d.

It's amazing how you can be swimming above seaweed and clear water just inland of the Australian coast and when sitting in the boat with your book it feels just like a summer day on the Tennessee River.  The distances are bigger, the trees are of the gum variety and the cliffs are sandstone, but the atmosphere and the feel, the water color and the trees definitely share some similarities.  As most of you know, this is one of my favorite ways to spend a summer day so I was quite pleased.  We spent the rest of Australia day in the one air conditioned room in the house watching Harry Potter and vegging on hummus and cheese.

Unfortunately the evening kind of marred the day for me with a bout of food poisoning, but I felt fine by the next morning, though the lack of sleep did lead me to leave for the "Blueies" (i have no idea how you would spell that but Australians seem bent on making everything sound adorable. "breakkie" "sunnies" "barbie") a little later than planned, but it still ended up being a beautiful day in the mountains.

The mountain view was beautiful, and again reminiscent of our own blue tinged Smokey Mountains, but very, very hot.  The Blue Mountains are the closest thing Australia really has to mountains, Katoomba (the town I was in) actually gets snow during the winter! gasp! So they were not prepared for the heat wave that was reaching well into the 90s the day I was visiting.  I spent some time walking to and from the overlook, walking around the shops and cafes, and most of all I spent time sweating. It was lovely.  Katoomba is a lot like Asheville, a mixture of poor dirty hippies and rich retirees summering in the mountains, with lots of second hand clothing stores, antique shops, and lots and lots of high priced cafes selling excellent coffee and staggering prices.  On the ride home I was accompanied by a nice young man who was completely wasted from the bag of red wine he had liberated from its box and brought along for the trip.  This being my last night in Sydney we went out for Vietnamese and upon my father's reccomendation I had his favorite bun thit nun and it was fabulous. though anything with fish sauce and barbeque pork would be hard pressed to taste bad.

 This morning I left Sydney and headed north (where weirdly for me, it got hotter) to Brisbane.  We went to a look out, walked around the city a bit, and I got to get settled in.  Tomorrow morning I am headed out to go camping for 2 days one night at a lake about 2 hours away, so I had better get my beauty sleep, I must look my best to sweat, swim, hike, and kayak all day!