On to our next leg of the epic road trip with my parents...we booked a week at Surfers Paradise in the Gold Coast. Our apartment was in a great location - right on the beach, and right on the border of
Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach. So we avoided the party atmosphere of Surfers Paradise, but were able to walk to the shops and watch surfers from our balcony while drinking our morning coffees. It truly was lovely and relaxing. The weather forecast did not look too friendly leading up to our week on the coast, but we had a good amount of sunshine in spite of this, and were able to play in the waves and the sand.
Lunch pit-stop. I can't get over how many parks there are in this country. And you can almost always count on toilets and BBQ's!
Prickly pear (I think).
We arrived at our apartment in the dark, but this was our glorious view in the morning.
The big boys (Kevin, my dad, and Rylan) got up super early that first morning to go ocean fishing. The rest of us had fun at the beach and in the pool.
Calla was beautifying her sand castle in this position. The painful side plank. Oh to be 9 years old and pure muscle again.
We had a lot of fun finding treasures on the beach. We noticed a few jellies washed up on the beach in the beginning of the week. Later in the week, we had strong winds and currents that brought a lot more jellies onto the beach. One of us ended up having a very painful encounter...
One of the parties on the boat gave us another fish to give us a couple of big meals. I think we were all a little tired of the smell of fish once we reached the end of these two beasts. But they were very tasty the first night!
Another highlight - Seaworld for the day! Highlights there included:
touching stingrays, the dolphin show (which brought this non-crier to tears, it was so beautiful), and the roller-coaster.
Kevin ran around on land and doused us all with water canons on this wet ride. We barely sprinkled him from our little boat.
Jo and I watched the others scream on the big roller-coaster.
Kevin and the big kids are in the first two rows.
Jo was so excited to have a roller-coaster his size and he ducked his head down the entire time (he's in the front with Rylan). Funny kid.
Beach and pool-side fun.
Poor Calla was the unfortunate one of us to be stung by one of these nasty jellies - the bluebottle, otherwise known as the Portuguese man o' war. The jelly was stinging her leg when she came out of the water, and it ended up stinging her hand as she quickly wiped it off. We headed to the lifeguard station where we rubbed something on it (I'm guessing some kind of vinegar-like gel) and were told to throw her into a hot shower; the best remedy for the pain. Our friendly Aussie lifeguard went on chatting about how painful stings are, especially when it's your first one, oh and how a sting on the hand is the worst, while poor Calla was standing there crying. Eventually we escaped and threw her into the hot shower. In about 30 minutes she was just about back to herself, and back playing in the sand and pool. But there was no more playing in the waves that afternoon for any one of us.
We watched a few of these kite boarders in amazement. They flew way up into the air, and also went quite far out into the ocean. Very impressive.
Our Easter egg hunt was in a pretty spectacular spot this year. We normally have our Easter egg hunt in the spectacular Rocky Mountains, but this was a great alternate location.
Before our Easter dinner, we went for a waterfall walk in the rainforest to see glowworms. It was really really cool.
The glowworms were in this cave (which was also full of bats) and beside the trail. I accidentally deleted the only decent picture I got of the glowworms in the dark.
Easter dinner
They are so adorable. They made the trip out to Australia to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, and we had a wonderful time celebrating at the beach!
Cool adventure! Miss you all!
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