The Grampians

 We have just got back from our first week-long stay in our caravan. We went away with my parents, who are experienced travellers, so they could give us some advice on our setup, what we need, what we don’t need. It was fantastic, they gave us so many tips for our trip that we just want to pack up and go now.

We went to the Grampians. It is such a beautiful part of Australia, I love it. I have been there a few times before as a child and had great memories.

I also went there as uni student but had quite a different experience as we hiked for 5 days.

Then Matt and I went there 7 years ago for our 5 year anniversary. There had been a fire through 6 months earlier but it was still so beautiful. It was black but with little shoots of green spurting everywhere. Just beautiful to see how our country can recover from such a devastation.

This time there was a fire through there just 2 months earlier but we saw very minimal parts of it this time. However we did see how the area had recovered from 7 years ago and it amazed us that we could still see the blackened tree trunks even though they had so much foliage on them.

It was a slightly different holiday then we expected. Where we stayed had no mobile phone service or TV reception. We had planned to do some research and I was going to blog but none of that happened. But it was actually nice to have no technology as we spent quality time with our beautiful boys. While we were there Ethan started riding his bike without training wheels. I have never been prouder of him. It took him a few goes to get use to starting but he got the hang of it. And Nate has been having speech therapy for 6 months now and the week away was great for him he started speaking more, and getting more interested in talking. The lack of technology ended up being a blessing in disguise.

We did a few of the easy walks and to our surprise the boys managed walking the distance. Nate did hop in the backpack for a while but managed to walk part of the way. And Mr Independent thought that he should walk the Grand Canyon which was challenging for Ethan but that didn’t stop Nate he did such a great job. They both wanted to walk the rest of the way to the Pinnacle but Matt and I thought that would be crazy so we went back to the car.

We had a great time and managed fine. Now the countdown has begun, this time in 10 months we will on trip of a lifetime, our dreams becoming a reality. Yeh!! Can’t wait.