The Great Ocean Road...

Now I can see why it's on the list of the 1000 places to see before you die. It seems like every time we came around a corner we were in awe.

We left after work on Friday (or at least after I was done with work) and drove the Princess Highway (I think) to Warrnambool. We found a nice holiday park (basically an RV park with cabins, powered sites, and camp sites) right by the ocean and set up the tent before venturing into town for dinner. We had a great dinner at a local cafe, took a walk along the beach looking at all of the stars, and then went to bed. The next morning we left Warrnambool heading back towards Melbourne, but this time along the Great Ocean Road. We stopped at all of the lookouts along the way seeing the Grotto, the London Bridge, and the Twelve Apostles (definitely the most well-known of all of the structures). The views were great and we couldn't have asked for better weather. We made our way to Apollo Bay where we did a little shopping, ate dinner (heart shaped pizza), and found another holiday park to set up camp for the night.

Oh yeah- we also took a little detour to a lighthouse before getting to Apollo Bay (okay- so it was a long detour). There were signs along the way to watch for roos, koalas, and echidnas so Mark told me to keep an eye on the trees since we hadn't seen koalas in the wild yet. I told him that we weren't going to find any koalas; we didn't even know how high to look. Moments later, I ate my words. A few cars had pulled over and people were out taking pictures of something in a tree. Of course we had to pull over, and what do you know, it was a wild koala! We sat and watched it for a good 10 minutes and took probably 100 pictures of it climbing and eating. It was awesome! By the time we got to the lighthouse, we'd probably seen 5 more koalas, although none as active as the first.

Today we planned on doing a little swimming and surfing (or at least something that possibly resembled surfing using a surf board) on our way back to Melbourne. The first beach we stopped at is known for surfing, but they were having a life savers competition, which was cool, but meant the beach was packed. We continued down the road a ways and came to a nice beach in Anglesea. Unfortunately it was a little cool out and the wind was blowing, but we thought we'd give it a try. We ate lunch on the beach (a very sandy lunch due to the wind) and then Mark went swimming. I decided it was too cold so I laid out and soaked up the sun (and sand- did I mention it was windy). After an hour or so, we decided we'd had enough and continued back to Melbourne. The roads were much windier today and again the views were spectacular. What an awesome weekend!