An IN-TENTse & GORGE-ous trip up the West Coast

So I was sitting in class today and thought to myself, 'Hmmm, Kelsey, You need to blog today!' Since I naturally need to listen to myself, that's EXACTLY what I decided to do! =) Get ready for more fun...

About 3 days after our group-long excursion, there were 16 of us (14 girls and 2 lucky boys; both with girlfriends, which was good since we were focused on the trip, not on boys) from the P&O that rented 4 cars and began a 4000km drive that took 7 days. Our plan was to see as much of Australia as we could, that IS why we come here, right?! =) The itinerary was to drive up the coast, few stops on the way, eventually reaching Ningaloo Reef--the best reef in Australia. Some people think that the best one is the Great Barrier Reef, but it's become so tourist-attracted that it's deteriorating and you have to take a boat to get out to it. So we picked the Ninglaoo Reef, one that you can walk out 50 feet from the shore and There it is!! We also headed over to the Pilbara and Karijini National Park to do some more sight-seeing. That was our plan!...and just so you know how late this post is, the dates for our trip ('holiday' as they say here in Oz) was 7-14 April. (Yes, I'm that far behind). Oh well... =) heehee

We got to watch MANY sunrises!!! This was the first!

We started heading north and stopped at our first stop about 2 hours away, the Pinnacles in Numbung National Park! When we were on our way there I was seriously thinking there was going to be about 11 of them, but Nope! There were THOUSANDS!!! An entire desert full that was turned into a forest from these lime-rich sand formations that were shaped around 30,000 years ago! It was sooo cool. Aside from first losing some cars in our caravan, lasting about an hour, we had a successful stop! The drive was going to be long enough, so we headed out after some pictures and some lunch...Found a campsite outside of Kalbarri National Park, and it was early to bed for early to rise! Sunday, Easter Day, incorporated a trip into Kalbarri to visit the famous God's Window ('Nature's Window' to be politically correct, but we like God's Window better). <3 The view was amazing!!! It was the first gorge we saw on our trip, and what a way to see it! Spectacular! Easter Sunday, God's Window, beginning of our trip.... just a few signs that our trip was going to be amazing! The rest of the day was spent driving to Coral Bay--one of the best beaches to visit on the Ningaloo Reef. By the time we got there it was late and we had to camp in a random field behind a hostel. Totally weird, but fun! This was also the day that I DROVE!!! First of all, the drivers seat is on the opposite side, the seat belt feels weird then, and the turning signal stick and the

Looking through God's Window.

 windshield wiper stick are switched. So its pretty funny when you're ready to make a turn and on a 90 degree day you hit the windshield wipers! Haha it gets laughs for sure! Also, they drive on the opposite side of the road, so it's kind of freaky when you're seeing these HUGE road trains (like a semi, but have 3 large trailers attached to them; yes, they are legal, and scary to drive by because they take up half the road). Any who, mini heart attacks happened a LOT making sure I was on the 'correct' side of the road. So driving was a whole new experience on it's own! Fun though =)

All of Monday was spent at Coral Bay beach!...it was also 114 F. Yes, we got burned, and dehydrated. In Australia there is water shortages so lots of places don't have drinkable water, so we had to buy it/fill up when we could...this got expensive, so we were keeping it minimal. The beach was amazing, and walking out 50 feet from the shore we started seeing these foot-and-a-half long fish. Freaked the living daylights out of me!! I didn't realise that the reef started so close! So we all grabbed our snorkel gear and jumped back in!....indescribable....but I'll try. We saw blue neon fish, clown fish, rainbow fish, 'Gill' (from Finding Nemo) I think he's an angel fish, starfish, eels, squid, HUGE brains of coral, yellow fish, black fish, one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish and so so so much more. Haha It was amazing! It was like living the Discovery channel!...We spent many, many hours in the water and on the beach before driving up further to a town called Exmouth; 6 of us girls had a date! Due to a birthday, we bought some burgers and had a barbie that night. It was a lot of fun!

6am came pretty early.....but after a week-long trip with Peta on our Shark bay trip, we were getting used to it. Also, once the sun was up it was pretty hard to keep sleeping in a tent. At 7am, us 6 girls went across the street to the visitors centre for out date...with Whale Sharks! We spent the entire day on a boat! I've been missing that, and can't wait to do it when I get back home. The day was phenomenal! We got to do a morning snorkel, seeing 3 HUUUUGGGEE sting rays (I quickly swam from those), but we also saw SO many fish, too. Instead of swimming on the inside of the reef like in Coral Bay, our boat brought us to the out-skirts of it and there were even MORE brightly-coloured fish! Back on the boat, the 6 of us did the typical 'Titanic pose' on the bow of the boat and proceeded to layout and tan. We made good friends with the crew, got to drive the boat for a while, and even got to talk to the spotter-plane pilot. Early afternoon we had a shark spotted! In groups, we jumped in and waited for the largest fish in the world, a docile shark, come our way. I swam to the spot and about peed my pants when I saw it (good thing I was in the water!). This HUGE majestic creature was slowly moving right beside me... sigh.... a sight I'll never forget. It was breath-taking, but I had to swim to keep up with it, so I did. You can only swim by them for about 5 minutes each time, or else they get scared and dive into the deep unknown. Since we didn't want that to happen, our groups switched off and on, which also gave us a break to rest and get some non-seawater in our systems! We got to go in about 5 times, and each time I kept right up in the front of the group and as close to the shark as I was allowed, just to make sure I got everything out of the experience as I could. Something like that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I wasn't about to regret any of it!!...There was a photographer
with us and he snapped pictures, of which I was the only one in our group that actually had a shot with the whale shark!!! Yeay, Go Me!!! <3 Once the whale shark decided he wanted to swim away, we all got back on the boat and took a cruise through Tiger Shark Alley....which is exactly as it sounds! We saw this HUGE 10 foot tiger shark swim right under the bow of our boat, it was awesome!! Some of the staff even grabbed their snorkel gear and jumped in to swim with it! (Mind you this is an animal that would actually eat a person) But the guys we were with convinced us that sharks are not as bad as people make them out to be, but I don't know...I'll keep living, just to be safe!.... After an afternoon snorkel seeing TONS of sea cucumbers and lots more fish and sting rays, we got back on the boat to go back to meet the rest of our gang. After meeting up with everyone, one car stayed back for a scuba dive the next day, and 3 of our cars continued down the road headed to the Pilbara.

Me and my new 25ft. friend, and a couple of his buddies!

Wednesday was a lot of driving....but we did stop at Hamersley Gorge. WOW-za!!!!! Favorite gorge we saw BY FAR! We climb down the gorge and come to this gorgeous river, walls that had an artistic-like colour of rocks, glistening slabs of rocks with water trickling down them, and a tree with a rope swing!! Seriously.... it was AWESOME!!! The rope swing reminded me of Bemidji, and there was a cliff that you could jump off of into the cool, pristine FRESH water that reminded me of the Quarries back in St. Cloud. It was perfect! I value freshwater rivers SOOOO much now! And just up the river was a smaller pool inside a cave with a small waterfall falling into it. This entire place was one of those things that just kept getting more and more breath-taking! I would go back any day, and encourage everyone to go there!

View from inside Joffre Gorge.

All of Thursday was spent in Karijini N.P. looking at different gorges.  We had to hike down to a few of them, on level 4 and 5 trails, so I felt pretty accomplished after that! Plus it was fun to have to scale a rock wall to get to a secluded spot! All 12 of us made it, and we all felt the long hikes were 100% worth it! One stop was Joffre Gorge, and down at the bottom was a shallow pool with pebbles built-up to get to the centre of this isolated pool in the gorge. It had a small waterfall, and the whole aura was Serenity. If I ever needed a place to meditate and was near Karijini, that is EXACTLY where I'd go. Also, throughout the trip I tried to take some artsy-fartsy type shots, and I really liked this one, so that's why I picked it =) ...Our favorite place of the day we visited was the stop with Circular Pool and Fortescue Falls.  It was about a km hike down to Circular Pool, which was absolutely fantastic. The water was pretty cold, but the way the water shimmered on the red-colours in the walls was SO pretty.....then we trekked through a bunch of trees, rocks, and scaled a couple more walls to get to Fortescue. B-E-A-utiful! There were these huge slabs of slate that came out from the sides of the wall for tanning/relaxing, a GORGE-ous waterfall, and water we couldn't help but run and jump into! We spent a good part of the day here, it was soooo nice to relax and enjoy God's creations, especially after long days of driving. We tried to get in as much of the sights as we

Fortescue Falls

 could, and I feel we accomplished that, and more! Even looking back through all my pictures, it doesn't capture everything.  The feeling of seeing each of these sights for the first time were moments that can't be matched by a picture.... I've been learning a lot throughout this trip to Australia: Don't be struggling to take a picture to capture a moment, for you're living in it...enjoy the moments as they come, because they don't last and you're left with a picture of the moment you missed.....

I'll be the first to admit I don't always heed my own advice, but I've been thankful for more of the moments I've been given. Friday was a very long 15 hour drive back to the P&O, but we were all anxious to sleep on a mattress and no longer the ground.  I drove for a good majority of the day. It was nice, I had country playing for the most part, naturally. And the other drivers were all so kind. I felt like I was on a back road in the country because most of the people I passed gave the 2-fingered wave! As far as I could tell, it was the 'peace' wave, rather than the other way; which is equivalent to the middle finger back home. So I'm hoping they were all being friendly, because after I saw a couple people wave to me, I started to make the gesture wave to each driver, of which some replied kindly. It was almost a sense of home or Nebraska, it made me happy =) ...Driving also included kicking up the speed to a supposed 165kmph (which I think is rubbish!) 145 was what I saw I got to....speed limit was usually 110. Shhh... But it's the Outback, it was basically us and road trains, and we wanted to get home that night so I knew we had to kick up the speed a little....For those of you that don't know, 1 mile is approximately 1.6 km...so 160kmph would be 100mph.... Pretty sure I wasn't going THAT fast, course I am used to a truck... hmmm.... still not admitting it. And the funny thing was that once we switched vehicles, about 20 minutes later we all got pulled over for going 127kmph....BAHAHAA... just warnings and they thought we were from Canada (a common misinterpretation). I just laughed.... The others on my trip were certain we would've gotten a ticket if I was driving, but I think they're just exaggerating. While I was driving they were all keeping up with me, so I wasn't the only one going that speed! I think the others just like to fudge reality. =) ....or maybe I do. =)

After all the fun, including: one kangaroo trying to become one with one of our cars (no damage, luckily), LOTS of Outback red dirt all over our cars, 2 windshields cracked, more PB&Js consumed than I've had in the past year, 4000km driven, the same 3 cds on repeat, and many sore butts...we all had a fabulous time. The 16 of us grew closer together and more IN-TENTse conversations were had, as well as seeing some GORGE-ous gorges! =) It was a well-spent week and it was worth all the driving!..

I hope all of your guys' lives are going well. I know the weather is getting hotter over there, so I'm happy to hear that! Especially since in only a short month I'll be home....It's getting to be Winter over here, which consists of about 5 mins of typhoon rain sporadically throughout the days, but still some 90 degree heat waves. So I'm not complaining =) I can't come back pale, so I'm continuing to check out the beach....rain or no rain.... I'll be sure to post more now that my course load is finally going down. Enjoy!..Cheers!

Just another hobbit in the Shire!!!