Advertisement
Published: January 17th 2009
Edit Blog Post
so after melbourne we got our little bucket on wheels from thrifty and headed out to the great ocean road. of course we got lost in melbourne. NOT our fault though! their signage SUCKS!! it took us about 15mins of circling, but we finally found our way onto the B100 (that's the great ocean road!). we went to geelong to check into our hotel and upgraded to a room with a view - it was a stunning view of this gorgeous blue bay. THEN we officially headed out onto THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD (seeing a theme here...?).
the scenery is really beautiful until apollo bay, but after that there's no ocean view, just miles of sloping hills and farmland. it took us a longer time to drive than we imagined and so we got thwarted at cape otway lighthouse "australia's most significant lighthouse" and "the highlight of the great ocean road." ACTUALLY we got there at 5:40pm and the bastards had closed twenty minutes early. i was very saddened by this 'cause it was the main reason I wanted to do the great ocean road. there was a bootleg crappy lookout though and we did get to stop at another
light house which was beautiful. really wish we could get some pictures uploaded, but not gonna be able to until we get back. OOOH! on the way to the prematurely closed lighthouse, we saw koalas!!! i spotted some sitting like lumps on a log while we were going 50KM down a lane and staring through thickets of trees :] susan hopped out and confirmed my sighting. then a bit ways down there road there were tons of them swarming the trees and we took some video of them moving around! It was very cool. And now I (Susan) can't always get upset when I see signs for kangaroos, crocodiles, and koalas - because finally one of the signs was true. OK I'm still pissed that I didn't see one kangaroo in Australia (and wallabies don't count).
after the lighthouse we wound our way through the farmland to the 12 apostles. now i'm not gonna make a joke about it being a religious experience ;] but i could if a wanted to. teehee. it was really majestic - susan confirms it was BETTER than big sur and the painted rocks of michigan. we got there almost at sunset so the
entire area was suffused with this golden light and the water was true aquamarine blue. susan was scared to drive in the dark so we didn't stick around for the sunset (which turned out to be smart since the sun didn't actually set for another hour and a half).
while driving back, i lamented that i didn't get to see the arch rock so instead of staying on the highway we pulled off at loch ard gorge - the site of a shipwreck - which was super awesome! PLUS it turned out to be the site of the island arch that i wanted to see :] yay! We made our way back to geelong on the 'highway' read: 2 lane road and were treated to the biggest moon we have ever seen! It was sitting right at the horizon and was a subdued marigold orb. We were also entertained by the stay awake or die signage that peppered the roadside (yes there were signs that said TAKE A POWER NAP NOW and A MICRONAP KILLS IN SECONDS) 😊
Advertisement
Tot: 0.174s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0852s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb