intense camping trip

Get it? In-tents/Intense... haha I just crack myself up. Anyway- you should all be proud of me because last week- from monday all the way to sunday, (that's 6 nights if you're counting), we spent camping at a place called Boydtown. It's right on the coast- at the easternmost part of Australia, just over the border of Victoria into New South Wales. (those are Aussie states by the way) It took us about 7 hours to drive there, and the car was completely stuffed to the max. Jen and I even had to pack everything in one suitcase- no small accomplishment. Since last week and this week are school holidays, sort of like our spring break, whole families got to come. These Australians sure do know how to vay-cay...

We had a decent sized group, including the Hansens and us, a family called the Laytons: James & Annie, with their 3 kids Elly (15), Josie(14), and Tristen(11) (aka "Wicky"); also a lady from church named Rach, with her daughter Jess (14); a girl from church named Allira (24); Rach's new boyfriend Lee, Elly's bf Tim(15), and another guy from church named Tom(24) (aka "Campy). Excellent group- we had tons of fun!

Home sweet home! This is the lovely 3-man tent Jen and I shared for the week.. honestly- whoever comes up with those numbers is ridiculous. Oh, and both of us are officially tent experts by now.. We put this up and took it down and put it up and took it down... love it.

Here's a few of the kids from the week- unfortunately we didn't take tons of pics throughout the trip.. we were looking a bit rough the whole time (as the Aussies say, we were looking "ferile." haha) Pictured from left: Allie, Sophie, Josie, Jen, Wicky, and me. All of us got along super well- the kids are all best friends already, and everyone there really was awesome. We had lovely fireside chats every evening! One of the highlights of the evenings was teaching everyone how to make s'mores- can you even imagine camping without them?!!- and they all loved them. We had to make a substitution for graham crackers, since they don't have them here, but it worked nonetheless.

Our campsite was literally right behind the small sand dunes, so it took about 30 seconds to walk to the beach from our tent. Um, awesome. :) It's spring here now, but that just means it could easily feel like summer or winter at any moment. Tuesday was absolutely brilliant- so warm I even ventured into the icy water! However, I'm not sure if any of you heard about the horrible dust storm that hit Sydney on Wednesday (the pictures are worth looking at), but since we were semi-close to Sydney, we woke up and it had rained what looked like red mud. Sick out. I wish I would have taken pictures of everything- it was disgusting! We were lucky in that we didn't have to suffer too much rain throughout the week though. The wind, however, was another story. Remember how I said that our campsite was seconds from the beach? Perhaps not the best plan.. by Wednesday afternoon we had been so tossed around from the never-relenting wind that we decided to pick up everything and move across the campground to another site. Excellent decision. Though it took a fair bit of work to move everything, it was definitely worth it so that the tents would stay in one place, and we only had to add on 2 minutes to our beach-walking time.

Here's a picture of some of our group enjoying the beautiful beach! 

I don't know if you can tell much, but as well as being on the beach, we were also in the mountains. This trip, therefore, answers the age-long dilemma: Beach or mountains? Answer: both. I choose Australia.

Excellent camping trip. :) I've never gone camping that long in my life... I was pretty impressed for making it that long, I'll admit... but actually I loved it. I love love love sitting on the beach, and being outside, and hey- there were showers and toilets, so it was totally fine. These people camp in style too- we ate very well while there! Porter-house steaks, a lamb roast, chicken casserole, etc- all cooked over the fire too! 

Saturday was a huge day for Melbourne- the footy Grand Final day. We managed to find a TV showing the game in a pub nearby, so Jen and I can check one more Aussie thing off the list. It was fun to watch, although I must say that America's superbowl has Australia way way beat at good commercials... In case you're interested, the game was Geelong vs. St. Kilda, and it was a nail-biter right to the end, which culminated into another Geelong Grand Final victory. Fun!