Australia: Day 7, The Great Ocean Road
Australia: Day 7, The Great Ocean Road
I woke up VERY excited about our day on The Great Ocean Road! Having seen pictures over the years, I knew it was going to be amazing – and with the weather we were having, it was going to be the perfect day!
We started moving around 8:30 am, showered, cleaned up the van, and then hit the road. Today was the only day that the GPS unit annoyed me. After plugging in the address for Anglesea, it wanted to take us a different route than we wanted to go (B100). We ignored it for a good hour before it decided to catch up to our plan.
I asked Josh to drive, because I really wanted to experience the drive. Every time I thought we were getting close, I started getting excited. Of course, the curves on the road teased me and it took longer to actually get to the coast than I thought. But once we were actually upon it, we couldn’t get to our first stop fast enough!
We stopped at the first place we could pull the van off, The Bay of Islands. The view was so pretty, and I just knew the views would be more amazing along the way.
We also stopped at The Bay of Martyrs, The Grotto, London Bridge, The Arch, Loch and Gorge, all before making it to the Twelve Apostles.
All of the parking areas up until the Twelve Apostles were pretty small, in fact, there were pull-off parking areas that we couldn’t get the van into – but I wasn’t too bummed since we hit all of the other bigger ones. Due to the number of people that visit the Twelve Apostles each day, there is a massive parking lot and a walkway under the highway to get to the main viewing spot.
We parked the van, walked over to the platforms, and I was in awe. It. was. spectacular. I’m not sure how long we spent walking around, but I know I took a lot of photos. I really could have stood there for hours on end – it would have been amazing to watch the sunset, but we weren’t able to stay that long!
The Twelve Apostles
While we were enjoying the view, we were also getting a lot of sun. We hadn’t picked up any sunscreen up until this point, which was a major fail on my end. I didn’t pack any, because I didn’t want to deal with it taking up space in the suitcase when we could buy it there…we just didn’t get it right away.
Since Josh drove the first part of the day, I volunteered to take the wheel after we ate lunch, and it wasn’t too long before I regretted it! It seemed that up until this point, any time we had winding roads or steep drives, I was the one driving – and that held true today too! Josh laughed because he knew he had gotten out of a somewhat stressful drive. Had we been in a normal car, I would have been fine – but again, this thing was large!
After awhile we stopped in Apollo Bay, as Josh was as red as a tomato and was in some pain from the sunburn. I didn’t notice how bad it was until we were out of the sun, and after awhile, my arms started to sting. We found our way to a chemist to pick up a bottle of aloe and a bottle of sunscreen for the rest of our trip. I could just hear my friend Mary Frances’ voice scolding us for not protecting our skin go begin with (she’s a doctor focusing on dermatology).
A little over an hour later, we made it to Anglesea, where we stayed at the Anglesea Beachfront Family Caravan Park. The park had a lot of great amenities, and they had WiFi! We had been without for a week, so we caved for 24 hours of access. I checked email before handing the laptop over to Josh to play online while I cooked spaghetti for dinner. I’ll be the first to admit it wasn’t all that great. I used some hamburgers that we’d picked up and broke those apart, and the sauce we bought at the store wasn’t something that our taste buds liked. Josh was a champ though, and ate as much as he could.
Josh washed dishes while I walked down to the beach to try and capture some shots as the sun was going down. The caravan park was right on the beach – so it was a quick walk! Luckily, dish duty didn’t take too long and he was able to join me out on the beach. It was so peaceful, I saw maybe 5 other people out while we were.
After I felt satisfied with my photos, we walked back to the van and watched a little TV before calling it a night around 11 pm. We knew we had an early start in the morning for a very exciting day – didn’t want to stay up too late!
[#8 of #52]
