Weekend in the Blue Mountains

Given the 90 degree weather and beach atmosphere, we decided we needed a getaway to make it feel a bit more like the holidays back home. Thus, we decided to take a trip to the Blue Mountains (in the Great Dividing Range), which are about 2 hours from Sydney. You might call it lack of research or maybe us not understanding the Aussie idea of cold yet, but we were quite surpised to find out that the mountains weren't so much mountains, but more like the rolling hills of West Virginia and their idea of cold was 18 degrees (about 65-70 degrees Fahrenheit) - note that it is only one of two areas that does get snow in the winter, so I guess I'll give them that. I'm not sure if this is fact, but I think Australia has to have more National Park land than any other country in the world. It seems like almost every amazing view is preserved for the people vs. in the US where we just take all of the beautiful coastlines and mountains and build houses for the extremely wealthy. At any rate, we spent the first three days hiking up and down the mountains and through the temporate rainforests (after all of the stairs, I think we were both rethinking our assessment that they were hills). I tried to count the steps on one of the walks and lost track somewhere after 2,000. Katie took a ton of pictures of the waterfalls (so our apologies if you look at our pictures and get bored looking at a bunch of waterfalls that look the same, I promise each picture is a different one). The area is filled with eucalyptus trees that give off a mist of oil, which gives the mountains their blue tint, thus the name.

The last day of our trip, we drove to the Jenolan Caves which are about an hour from the mountains. It is one of the biggest cave systems in the world, with over 360 known caves (I say known because they first discovered the caves 180 years ago and they are still finding new ones today). We toured the Lucas Cave, which is one of the largest and also the one that most people tour. Some of the chambers were huge, with one of them holding regular church services and concerts. It has arguable the best acquisitics of any "building" in the world (and it is completely natural).

Until next time... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!