And then Dad and I talked ... and he bestowed upon me wisdom that can only be imparted while at a Del Taco in Gilbert ... "oh so you're not even doing any day trips?"
Le sigh.
My exciting adventure down under had been reduced to being excited about taking exams for a class back in the States. BOH-RING. Right?
So after providing the usual excuses: Western Australia is big ... I have to go a long ways to get anywhere, and Boo! I don't know if my car could hack it ... blah blah blah I hung up the phone and thought, "what the hey?! Why not?" And within thirty minutes had booked a whale watching tour, and a stay at Ace's Motor Lodge and simultaneously crossed something off my bucket list.
Hanging with Humpback whales in the Southern Ocean ... and seeing the Southern Ocean for the first time? Cross, cross, double crossed off. *Note: there is some debate as to where the Southern Ocean and the Indian and Pacific end. In Australia ... anything south of Australia is considered the Southern Ocean ... so while not everyone agrees ... I go with Australia's view since I'm here ... and it's cool to say that I've seen and been in four of the five oceans.
Luckily it's really easy to get to Albany (I didn't even bring a map) ... it's almost a five hour drive, but literally, all I do is turn onto North Lake from where I am, turn onto Beeliar ... which then turns into Aramdale, which then turns into Albany Highway ... and my road trip had begun!!
Almost as soon as I was on the highway, all signs of suburban Perth began to fall away and instead were replaced with trees, and green pasture land dotted with sheep, and little lambs that were so sweet, it was hard to resist pulling over and kidnapping one. It's a good thing that I enjoyed those sheep so much, because that is all there was to see for five hours ... well that and road kill kangaroos (that was sad).
Below are a smattering of pictures of my grand 'ole time down south! :)
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| The Town of Albany |
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| The whale watching catamaran, with a 75 year old captain who would play the flute to the whales and talk about environmental conversation |
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| So I saw about five different whales ... haha, at least I'm pretty sure they were different. But didn't get a single good photo, you can kinda see a fin over on top. |
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| I sat with my feet over the edge the whole time, and look at the color of this water!!! It was beautiful. At one point I realized that three was this light green colored thing moving beneath my feet, only to learn that it was a flirty humpback whale swimming on her back beneath me. SO. COOL. |
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| I LOVED the water ... and look at the surface ... it really looked like this ... this odd/cool glassy surface |
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| A natural bridge!! How cool! I had seen pictures of this bridge before ... but what you can't tell by looking at a picture is just how absolutely massive it is, really cool!! |
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| So remember how I was talking about it's hard to tell how big the bridge was by the picture? It was the same with the gap ... it's ooh, rock face ... okay. But just to give an idea of how massive this is ... just look for the man standing on the upper left hand corner ... HUGE |
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| Obligatory self portrait. Sitting with my legs dangling into the gap, all wrapped up in my warmest to combat the winter weather that we have down here. |
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| I like this picture for a few reasons. 1. I like that you get to see the Spiderman sticker that came - free of charge- with my car on my side mirror. 2. It's an obviously beautiful view of the Southern Ocean 3. You can also see the Southern Ocean in my side mirror, so you get the view beside and behind me ... COOL! |
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| On my way back to "Ace Motor Lodge" where I was s drove past what must be a kangaroo farm, and decided to snap a photo, kangaroos are so beautiful when they are mid kangaroo hop |
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