Airlie Beach

Having friends come and visit was really exciting for Leah and me.  We are making friends here, but familiar faces are always nice to see.  We booked a trip for the four of us so Dave and Sarah could get to see a bit more of Australia than just Brisbane.

Airlie Beach is about an hour and a half by jet north of Brisbane.  It's the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands and from there the Great Barrier Reef.

Hey awkward family photo...

Actually we're looking right at the plane while they unload our bags.  Proserpine airport is the smallest airport I've landed at in a very long time.

The first day was kind of cloudy...

So we found something to occupy our time!

Dave was pretty enthusiastic about trying as many local foods as possible and he put on a bit of an exhibition, that night we found a seafood restaurant and tucked into a big plate of Kilpatrick Oysters, prawns, fish and chips and lots of beer.

Is this picture blurry? or was it just us?

We spent our first night there in a really nice backpacker's hostel thingo.  And by really nice, I mean and absolute dump, not bad for college age students who don't mind sleeping on a plastic covered mattress and can abide the occasional bed bug bite.  We did manage to find a really ratty copy of trivial pursuit with Australian questions.  None of us being native, we passed on a lot of questions.

Check out the fancy digs, is that a bottle of Beam and a box o'wine? Stay classy kids!

Sarah got a little wild with the die rolling.

It was a relatively tame night, and we were all excited to get on the boat in the morning.  We had booked a three day and two night cruise on a catamaran that would take us out to the Whitsunday Islands, about 15 miles off the coast from Airlie Beach. 

100th Post!!

Greetings Dear Readers!

Welcome to the 100th post!  We know we've been away for a while but rest assured we have been busy.

In the past few weeks we have had visitors from home, gone on a sailing trip, hiked in the rain forest and I've been to Sydney to climb the Sydney harbor bridge.  We haven't forgotten about you, we've just been refilling the batteries so to speak.

All told between the four of us we took over 1300 photos of the week.  I'm still trying to get them organized.  Over the next few nights I'll post some of my favorites.

One of ten million photos of the four of us from the weekend

Sarah and Dave getting a taste of SCUBA

The wild Cockatoos at the hotel looking for handouts

Cheeto ate a swath across this country!

We went to the rain forest

We saw some wallabies, check this guy with the straw in his mouth.

Thomas is happy as can be between these two.

Thought it was gonna take me sunnies!

We did a little hiking

Someone tooted!

More to come tomorrow...

Happy Birfday America!

No fireworks for us this year, but we did go see Toy Story 3 this morning with Andrew, Melissa and the kids.

We're getting ready to have visitors from the states arrive.  Dave and Sarah hit the ground at 6:30 in the morning.  We've got big plans for their time here and probably won't be updating the blog this week.  Rest assured we'll come back with some good stuff to keep you all entertained.

One quick thing from this week. We had a little visitor that we weren't expecting, and perhaps little isn't quite the word to describe him.  We were sitting and watching tv when all of a sudden Leah's eyes bulge out of her head and she points at the wall, where I see this:

Now bear in mind, we are in the middle of winter here and really haven't been seeing many insects lately aside from the occasional ant.  So this grasshopper seemed to come from nowhere.  And look at the size of the thing.  It's like military grade or something. I couldn't resist grabbing it of course. I mean what was I supposed to do?

This is one seriously strong grasshopper, it really took some effort to wrangle it.  Then I chased Leah around the apartment with the grasshopper in one hand and the camera in the other.  Let me tell you I got some really hilarious photos of Leah being horrified by the thing, but I'm not going to post them here.  She'd kill me or worse, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

I let the thing go outside and it flew away I then spent the rest of the night scaring Leah by looking up at the ceiling and pretending to see another one.  Ah, it's the little pleasures...