BrianaBrian

Our next little trip was out to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, which most of you probably know as Ayer's Rock. It's in the middle of the Australian Outback, technically considered "semi-arid" and not desert. It's so far away from any other towns- the nearest "city" is 1,200 kilometers away and the main road west is a dirt road for thousands of miles. They've actually had above average rainfall for a few years, so there is a now a lot of green vegetation- including plants and animals that haven't been seen in the area for decades or maybe ever. That all said, it is a very bizarre place. We flew into a tiny airport close to Ayer's Rock/Uluru, and a shuttle took us to our hotel, which is actually part of a very big resort. It's so ... read more

We survived the Milford Track! We woke up bright and early to catch our bus from Queenstown to Te Anau. It was pouring the whole ride their and the weather forcast posted at the Fiordland National Park visitor center predicted rain for the next several days. Yuck. We knew it rained a lot in this part of the country (the average annual rainfall in Milford is 276 inches), but it had actually been a pretty dry summer in this part of the country and we were hoping for at least 1 nice day out of the 4 that we were hiking. The trailhead is not accessible by road, so we had to take a boat across Lake Te Anau. By the time we got off the boat the rain had eased up a bit and we ... read more

We drove along the northern coast of the south island to get to Abel Tasman National Park. We had some time to kill when we got there, so we decided to go...SKYDIVING! Well, it wasn't a totally spur-of-the-moment decision, we had planned on doing it somewhere in New Zealand. This seemed like the perfect place, with mountains, Carribean-blue coasts, and a overal great views of both the south and even the north islands. It was an awesome experience. The views from the plane were great, and we went up to 16,500 feet. Briana jumped out first- "ladies first", Brian said. The guides were great at making you look at all the cool things and Briana's even let her "steer" the parachute for part of the way. We have photos and a DVD we'll share when we ... read more

So I finally have a little more time to write. The motel we're staying in has free internet on desktop computers and free laundry...so I'm writing while I'm waiting for our clothes to dry:) The computers we've tried so far don't seem to like the program that travelblog uses to upload photos, but I've been able to (very slooowly) add photos to an album on Facebook. For those of you that don't have Facebook accounts, you should still be able to see the photos if you follow this link: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10101088586885037.3076664.8623642&type=1&l=f5e0e3b3c5 E-mail Briana if you can't see them for any reason and we'll try to figure something else out. I'll give a little more detail on some of our favorit... read more

We're leaving in a few days for our 5 week adventure to New Zealand and Australia. We will try to post some photos and stories throughout our journey to keep our family and friends updated. Thanks for reading! Love, Briana and Brian... read more