Beautiful start to the day at Red Pine Camp

We left Lindsey's house just after lunch and headed up to Red Pine Camp on Golden Lake, Ontario. It's almost a two hour drive from Lindsey's house... 170 kms (105 miles), plus we had some stops to make along the way.

First stop was a UPS store to drop off my camera and have it shipped to the Nikon service center near Toronto.

Off to Red Pine Camp

So we are off to RPC (Red Pine Camp) today. This is a family camp that my parents brought us to. I first attended in 1964! And I worked up there in the summer of 1978. Ruth and I brought our children up to that camp, and our children brought their children.

Now, Ruth and I are bringing our grandchildren up there for the first time and giving Lindsey and Justin a break.

Visiting with family

Although we love traveling full time, it is always nice to come back to Ottawa once or twice per year.

We purposely made it back here before August 28th because it's granddaughter Sadie's 6th birthday today, and we have never been with her on her birthday!

And school starts next Tuesday with Sadie entering grade 1, and her older brother Cameron (age 8) is starting grade 3.

That was a lot of flying!

Wow.

That was a lot of flying over the past 9 days. In fact, we were in 7 different airports and on 6 different airplanes!

But, we are now at our daughter's house just south of Ottawa, and looking forward to seeing all of our Ottawa area family and friends over the next six weeks.

What did our Australia RV trip cost?

Yesterday, I received the insurance refund for the original flights that we had booked to Australia. If you remember, back in May Ruth was ill with a painful kidney infection and we ended up cancelling the original flights that we had booked.

So, the cancellation insurance did in fact cover all of our expenses for the part of the trip that we cancelled. It was also processed fairly quickly, but we didn't get the payment until we arrived back in Canada to pick up our mail.

A nice day at the park

We slept in a little bit again. Not letting all that travel and time change stuff affect us though. Other than not getting up until 8:30am, we have kept to our regular schedule and feel no ill effects of jet lag.

Planned on going for a morning hike, but it was almost noon by the time we got out to do it!

Back at Cabri Regional Park

Last blog post we were in Minneapolis airport waiting for our flight to Saskatoon. The two and a half hour flight went fine, and we arrived on schedule at 9:00pm.

Had to be the fastest ever processing through Canadian immigration and customs. I think from the time we left the plane, went through immigration, picked up our bags, and made it to the lobby was maybe ten minutes! Welcome back to Canada!

Heading back to Canada

Our 5 hour overnight flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles went without a hitch. It's funny how, after doing a 17 hour flight from San Francisco to Singapore and a 9 hour flight from Sydney to Honolulu... a 5 hour flight is nothing!

Hardly slept at all though. Sometimes I can nap, but this time I just couldn't doze off. Ended up watching the original American Graffiti movie. 1974, I think it was made?

Waikiki Beach and Honolulu

We had to get on the road by 7:30am this morning in order to return our rental car which was due back by 8:45am.

You would think that an hour and fifteen minutes would be lots of time to drive 20 miles (32 kms), but it almost wasn't.

Exploring Oahu, Hawaii... day 2

Out of the house by 9:30am. We drove over to Diamond Head Crater where there is a popular hike to the top.

Parking was $5.00, so we found a spot right at the bottom for free, and walked up to the main parking area. Good thing too, because it was full. Some people were in line for a spot, and others were turning around to head back down.

Exploring the island of Oahu, Hawaii

Slept like a rock last night!

Whenever we do time zone travel, we always try to put ourselves right into the time zone of our destination as soon as possible. So other than the nap we had when we arrived yesterday, we stayed up until 10:00pm last night which would have been extra late. For the most part, jet lag does not have too much of an impact on us.

Because we were extra tired, we slept right through until 6:30am.

Hawaii... first impressions

We've only been here half a day, so first impressions are exactly that! We realize that we are only here 3 days, so even then we're not giving it much of a chance. And, of course there is more to Hawaii than just the island of Oahu where we are.

Weather... well, maybe it's different at different times of year, but right now, it is hot and humid. Highs of 86F (30C) and lows of 70F (21C). And humid. Did I mention humid??

Goodbye Australia, Hello Hawaii

Hawaii is a special place, because it is truly "the 50th state" for us! Yes, we have now been to all 50 of the United States.

We've also been to all 32 states of Mexico, as well as all 10 Canadian provinces and two of the three northern Canadian territories. (One day we will make it to Nunavut!)

Last day in Australia

Wow, we've had a great stretch of weather here in Sydney to end our time in Australia. Ever since we arrived here last Tuesday, it's been decently warm with clear and sunny skies! Could not have asked for better.

There is so much to see and do in Sydney. Yes, a lot of it is geared towards expensive touristy things but we found that we had no trouble using up our time just sightseeing the free stuff.

More views of downtown Sydney

We relaxed for the morning because Ruth wanted to see the sunset from downtown on the other side of the Sydney Opera House. So we didn't leave the cottage until after lunch.

We figured that because it was a Saturday, the train wouldn't be very busy. And it wasn't busy at all... because it wasn't running!

Exploring downtown Sydney, Australia

We left the cottage at about 10:30am. A bit of a late start, but we wanted things to warm up enough that we didn't need to carry sweaters with us.

We walked the 2 minutes up to the Kogarah train station, and stopped in at a news stand to buy two Opal transit cards for the public transportation system here.

Not every day you see six lions...

Another beautiful day here in Sydney, Australia. Sunshine, and a high of 21C (70F). Perfect.

We are staying in the suburb of Kogarah. We are located about 5 kms (3 miles) from the airport, and about 13 kms (8 miles) from the main downtown area.

Saying goodbye to Bundy and Joyce

Yesterday afternoon, Garry flew up here from Melbourne to pick up Bundy and Joyce. He arrived at 4:00pm and brought along a couple of bottles of wine to share!

Ruth made dinner for us all, and we spent the evening chatting and drinking wine.

Last night was in fact our "last night"!

Our last night sleeping in our Australia camper, that is.

Does anybody else think that two and a half months went by really fast?! Man, it's a good thing we always have another adventure around the corner... wouldn't want to get bored or anything!

Today (Tuesday), we had to drive into Sydney.

Big blowholes in Kiama!

We headed into the town of Kiama this morning. It's a really pretty area, and with the rolling hills and green grass leading down to the sea, we think we could definitely spend more time here.

Unfortunate that we've only got the day, but it is what is is!

Only two more sleeps in the camper!

Well, things are really winding down now... we've only got two more nights sleeping in the camper!

Overall, it's been a good trip. But we will get into a little more detail in a future post, including our overall expenses and how we might do things differently next time.

I am not impressed...

I dropped the camera today, and yes... it is messed up.

The camera was in the case. It only fell from a height of about a foot and a half, and it only grazed the corner of the dinette seat before landing on my foot. I honestly thought it didn't hit anything hard enough to have caused a problem.

But I was wrong.

Severe, damaging winds

We knew the winds were coming. We had seen the forecast, and they were calling for severe, gale force winds starting Thursday night. But the winds actually picked up earlier than that.

We had been trying to get to a state forest campsite, but the route we took became a private road. So we settled for second best and simply parked in a hydro corridor beside the forest road. Not ideal, but with the winds the way they were we didn't want to drive any longer, and we didn't want to be parked under any trees!

Have never seen so many whales!

What a great day we had.

It started off cloudy and cool, and it kind of deteriorated when the wind picked up as well. But the forecast still called for clearing skies so we drove over to the village of Currarong and the Abrahams Bosom Reserve Park where we planned to go for a hike.

Why are the beaches empty?

We drove into the town of Huskisson, and found a sunny spot to warm up first thing this morning. And it didn't take long... with another day of blue sky and sunshine in the forecast, we were soon ready to open the camper door and let the sun shine in.

After breakfast, we went for a walk to get the blood flowing.

Cute things and funny things

So we're just taking our time exploring the little coves and coastal villages south of Sydney. Not in a real rush to get anywhere, and just relaxing.

We woke up this morning in a little forest area that borders a National Park. I got out of the camper, and looked over to see three kangaroos really close by! They didn't seem bothered by me at all. Further down the dirt road, I could see more of them.

Almost ran out of fuel!

We left the Milton Showgrounds at about 10:30am and headed back to the coast where I had seen a few short coastal walks.

The first one was about 3 kms (1.9 miles) round trip. Just enough to get the blood flowing.

We went to Dolphin Point... and saw whales!

We're only 200 kms (122 miles) away from Sydney now. But there is still lots to see between now and our arrival there on the 14th.

Quite a few National Parks and State Forests along the way, and we seem to be able to go back and forth between the mountains and the coast with no problem at all... we will probably drive 400 kms in order to do that 200km distance!

We were due for a good hike!

Our timing wasn't great though, because we ended up doing it on a Saturday. So there were quite a few other people taking advantage of yet another beautiful day who also planned on getting the same great views.

We decided on the Pigeon House Mountain trail. It's a popular hike because the views at the top are spectacular, and getting to the summit involves a series of stairs and ladders.

The coast is nice, but we are continually drawn back to the hills

Once again, we left our campsite upon waking up. It's been easy to find free overnight spots, but the last several have been located where we don't get any morning sun, so we move on right away to find a sunny spot to have breakfast.

And on that note... the sunshine and blue sky continues! Our Australian winter started off cool and wet, but the last few weeks have been nothing but gorgeous sunny skies.

The view from our breakfast table

We've actually been pretty lazy the last couple of days.

We made our way north back to Bateman's Bay, with a stop at the Botanical Gardens. I (Kevin) didn't find the gardens that interesting, but Ruth said she could have spent a longer time there.