Adelaide to Halls Gap-12/10/07

This was probably the longest drive on our trip that we will have done, and this was our final destination. We’ve already been to Halls Gap in the Grampians before but it was about 3 years ago, we’ve been there quite a lot so we know the little place quite well. We had to get up a bit earlier this morning (which I hated), to leave at 10.00. There was only the one stop along the way, and that was to a lookout at where we could get a great view of Adelaide. The city doesn’t seem as big as Melbourne but still… we could see heaps.

In the car I was listening to ‘Just Disgusting’ on CD, I listened to all 3 discs until we got to ‘Grampians National Park’ and then we were only about 30mins away from Halls Gap. After a long day of driving, we finally got to our little apartment. As we were unpacking the car, when I was inside our room I heard a very familiar voice, it sounded like my Pa, but I didn’t see how it could be. As soon as I turned around the corner to see who it was it actually was our Nana & Pa!!! I burst into questions as soon as I saw them “…how come?” “…why?…” “…what are you doing here?…” The answer I got was something like: “well we thought we didn’t have anything on so we came to visit you in Halls Gap and see what you lot are up to.” I was amazed to see them come up here all the way from Geelong, and they were in the apartment right beside us!

That night Nana had made us a delicious spag bol (Spaghetti Bolognaise).

13/10/07-The Last Full Day of the Trip!

It was a bit exciting today, but also a bit of, well, ”ohhh, why does the trip have to finish now? Now we have to go back to school and everything”, that kind of thing . I decided that we should make the most of this last day we have, Sean and I went down to have a hit of the tennis ball one last time. We were playing some different types of board games with Nana & Pa that Pa had brought over, then Mum & Dad called us over to get ready for the big walk up to the Pinnacle. There are a whole lot of walks and climbs in the Grampians that we usually do when we come down here, but the most common one that we do is the Pinnacle. I like this one a lot because there are some good bits where we have to climb up over some rocks, it was pretty fun. Along the way to the top of the Pinnacle walk, we did stop quite a bit, our first stop was at splitters falls, we stopped to have a look and to have a snack.

On the hard bits to climb over and a track wasn’t so easy to spot, there were arrows or markers pointing in which direction to walk. Sean and I had an attempt at counting all of them but it was too hard when we were trying to concentrate on the track as well. I got up to 60 markers and stopped but I reckon there were over 100. The walk took us 5hrs so we were certainly puffed out after that, we got back and found Nana&Pa in their room playing games. Then when we had a little rest Pa, Mum, Sean and I went to get an ice-cream each and went to see some kangaroos that were coming out, some of them had joeys.

Soon we tested out the pool to see if it was the same as it had always ben when we come here. We found out that the pool was freezing (it’s usually heated) and we had to pay to go in the spa. We didn’t stay in there for long!!