Honeymoon: Phase Two: Bay of Fires

Once we picked up the Getz, we headed into downtown Devonport. We parked and walked down to a coffee shop where we got some breakfast. We made our way back to the car, picked up the stove canisters, and were off. First we had to head to the Tamar Valley to do some wine tasting. This is a little out of my element. Jacqueline was excited about it, but I did not care much. We were so blown away on the drive by all the vegetation. It was green and there was so much water around. Supposedly it rains 300 days out of the year in Tasmania. It was beautiful, though slightly overcast on this day. We stopped to take some pictures, but the beauty was more in the whole environment rather than in a specific site. There were fields of poppies all around us and we read later that Tasmania produces 40% of the world’s poppies. It was less than an hour to get to the Tamar Valley. We stopped at the first winery that we found. It was rather early being 10am. This made us feel a little awkward to taste wine. I pretty much just let Jacqueline do the work. Eventually, we bought two bottles of wine, which made Jacqueline happy and the wine tasting was over. We thought we might get vineyard tours or something, but the whole wine tasting experience is odd. If someone asked me to go strawberry tasting, I would be like, “That tastes like a strawberry.” I am not sure why wine is so different. Plus I don’t even really like wine that much. Oh well, we moved on and in Launceston we got lunch and some groceries for the week. When leaving Launceston, the roads suddenly got crazy. They took us up steep hills and around many winding curves. We constantly questioned whether we were on the right track, because these were supposed to be major roads. We finally figured out that their major roads took us to scenic spots and through winding crazy areas. After driving a few hours, we found ourselves at the Weldborough Pass Rainforest Walk. It was only fifteen minutes, so we figured this was a good way to stretch our legs. The vegetation was awesome. There were huge ferns and great big trees. It was nice to be in a dense forest again. Back in the car and our drive took us to St. Helens. Here we had accommodation for the night at the Sweetwater Villas. The owner did not seem too concerned with us and gave us the room. It was an apartment style place. We quickly got our stuff in and got ourselves out as we headed out to the Bay of Fires just north of St. Helens. We parked and the first thing that we noticed was that there was no one else here. The beach was beautiful. The sand squeaked under our feet as we walked. The water was beautiful turquoise and the air was just warm enough to be in shorts and short sleeves. We walked the whole beach. The only other persons that we saw were locals including a guy with a pit bull who ran right up to us. It was the first of many that we would see as this seems to be a popular breed in Tasmania. What I thought was interesting was that the algae on the rocks was orange, which I had not witnessed before. It was a very good way to spend the late afternoon as it was such a nice walk along that beach. We worked up an appetite and since we had a kitchen, we cooked ourselves our own dinner. We made Alfredo pasta with calamari. It was very scrumptious. We walked down to the paved walk by the bay near our villas after dinner. It was chillier now and I got in some rock skipping, before we went back to the room. It was a great first day and we were excited for what tomorrow would bring.

Honeymoon : Phase One : Just Getting to Tasmania

Just getting to Tasmania is not an easy task. We started it out on December 3rd driving from our house in Springdale, UT to St. George. From there, we met the shuttle that took us to the Las Vegas Airport. When we checked in with United, we were met by a very rude woman who was appalled that we did not get our visas for travel to Australia. She made it sound like we would not be able to go on the trip. Well, we talked to someone else and realized that all we needed was to pay another additional fee of $25 a person and we would get our visas. This can be done for free online before your trip, but somehow United never informed us of this when we booked our flight. Whatever, it was expensive, but not much of a problem. My pack checked in at 51 pounds and Jacqueline's was around 37. It was good to get everything in those two bags plus our carry-ons. We sat in the Vegas airport for a good amount of time playing cards. When it finally came time to board, I almost made a big mistake because I dropped my passport. It was only out of my hands for a minute, but I still almost made a very costly mistake. The quick flight from Vegas took us to San Francisco. There we had to sit around for a long time before flying out also. We were able to help a Ukranian woman find her flight to Munich with our spare time. We finally got to board the flight. This was a 14 hour flight that we got 2-3 hours of sleep on. This flight dropped us at the Sydney airport. From there, we took another flight to Melbourne. Once in Melbourne and our luggage back in our hands, we boarded a bus that took us from the airport to downtown. This is where everything got confusing. We were supposed to take a tram down to the ferry terminal. We could not find any information about this tram. So we wandered around with our huge backpacks. I threw the carry-on in mine making it push 70 pounds. We thought maybe we should get some food, but the best we could do is rest at a juice place and have some juice and water to rehydrate ourselves. Finally we found out that we were just supposed to pay on the tram and after almost getting hit by a car, we found the right tram and got on. Once on, we just rode for free until they dropped us off at the harbor where our boat would leave in the evening. This gave us a lot of time to kill, but without the ability to move very quickly with all of the weight we were carrying on our back. After a bit of wandering and discussing, we sat down at D'lish Fish and had ourselves a seafood and chips meal. We left from there and just sat in the lobby of the Spirit of Tasmania and waited for our boat. We were able to load at 6pm and finally check into our cabin. The only thing I wanted to do was sleep, but Jacqueline convinced me to go check out the boat after we both got a much needed shower. We were able to make it out just in time for sunset and have a beer. We got a good view of the city of Melbourne which was a lot larger than I thought it was originally. We were off for an eleven hour boat ride and frankly I was ready to sleep most of that. Jacqueline and I disputed that a bit as she was ready to enjoy the boat. Eventually, I won out and we both got a decent night's sleep in before awaking in Devonport, Tasmania to get sniffed by the plant sniffing dogs and pick up our rental car, the Hyundai Getz, which would be our form of transport for a couple of days in Tasmania.

Water Canyon

Eric and I hiked Squirrel Canyon in May and we had such an excellent time that I wanted to go back just to show Jacqueline that country. So we made arrangements and met Eric early in the morning to hike Water Canyon which is the next door neighbor to Squirrel Canyon. Eric drove up there because Jacqueline's van was in the shop and we did not want to all have to squeeze into the Ranger. We parked at the same spot on the dirt road that we did for Squirrel Canyon. This left us with a little extra road to walk. Immediately, there was another car and it was the folks from Zion Adventure Company. There are two routes through Water Canyon. One is just a trail which you walk up, which everyone would do. The other is a technical canyon which you rappel down. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so there was no way I would think that canyoneering could be fun. We were just hiking and having a good time with it. The trail was very reminiscent of the Squirrel Canyon trail. It was blown out and cut out of the rock on the left side of the creek. At one point, we went right through the creek and had to walk up what looked like it would be a slippery rocky spot, but it was not bad and we were able to do it without getting our feet wet. The trail continued to gain elevation and at places it got steep, but there was nothing too incredibly difficult. It was between an hour and an hour and a half, before we popped out onto the plateau that I knew we would reach. This left us puzzled because once we reached the plateau, the trail disappeared. With Squirrel Canyon, we had an ATV track/hiking trail to follow which led us through some great scenery. Accessing that seemed to be a tough feat as we could look across a canyon and see the beautiful white frozen dunes that we could not get enough of on our last trip. We decided to take a different direction and head up as high as possible. This led us through a lot of sand and a little bit of rock. Soon we had amazing views of Zion and even further out to Brian Head. We continued our way up until it seemed like we could go no farther. There we found some slick rock and rambled on out until we realized we were near the head of an amazing canyon. It was very narrow and untouched. I made sure of this claim by scrambling down to the first rappel. There was a big ol' pondo that would be used as a bomber anchor, yet no signs of webbing and there would be no need for any bolts with this beast of a tree. We ate some lunch there and decided to make our way back after lunch. We picked a different route to return and Jacqueline got a bit worked up, probably recalling the last trip with Eric and I through the Barracks. We both reassured her that this was not going to be a repeat and it was not. We had to do a bit of downclimbing to get by a few obstacles and avoid a big dead cow, but eventually we found where the steep trail hit the plateau. Usually when you go for a trip like this and have to return the same way that you came, the results are not exactly spectacular on the return trip. Somehow when we were hoofing it uphill, we must have been keeping our eyes to the ground and missed a very key landmark. A very large arch stuck prominently out from the big wall above us. How we missed it, I am still unsure, but we managed to do so. This hike turned out to be perfect. It was about five hours in length which seemed to be about what all of us were in the mood for. I seem to always have a good time hiking with Eric and I really appreciate all the trips we get to take together. He puts up with Jacqueline and I, because I would not want her to miss out on any of these great places together. It is too bad that it will have to be until February until Eric and the Drakes can continue the rambles and scrambles through Southern Utah as we are heading out on our honeymoon and Eric will be out on furlough for adventures of his own.