Smith's Farm and Mountain Biking the Queen Charlotte Track

After our wine tasting afternoon, we stayed the night at Smith's Farm in Havelock. It had some fun animals and a pretty hike on site that led to a big waterfall. If you stay in the woods until dark, I guess you can also see glowworms, but I did the hike in the daylight.

On Monday morning, we rented mountain bikes and rode part of the Queen Charlotte Track, which we could access by riding only four kilometers from our campsite. New Zealand has several famous hikes; some take a full day and others take several days. The Queen Charlotte Track is one of the longer ones; it's 71 kilometers and takes most walkers four or five days and bikers two or three. We only rode to a major lookout and back, which took us a couple of hours. But that still gave us great views of the Marlborough Sounds. The panoramic shots below show you our whole view (if you combine them together).

It was a fun mountain bike ride and a good way to start the day, even though the weather was a little drizzly. But there was still some driving to do and more fun to be had on Christmas Eve Day! Stay tuned...

Muddy Buddies

A few weekends ago, we went to Lysterfield with Adam and Emily and Nigel and Kristy for an afternoon of mountain biking. It had been raining throughout the week, so the trails were extra muddy. By the end of our ride, we all felt like (or at least looked like) we had done the Tough Mudder race again! But despite the rain and mud, we rode for several hours and we girls even kept up pretty well with the boys!

Do you see the kangaroos?

Lake Elizabeth and Forrest Mountain Biking

After a Friday spent watching surfing and doing some surfing ourselves, we headed to Lake Elizabeth to camp. We were shocked at how crowded it was at this free campground, because it's sort of in the middle of nowhere in Victoria, but apparently Australians are big on camping over the Easter holiday. We got some rain that evening, but we were still able to cook our dinner and get a good night's sleep.

Lake Elizabeth is near the town of Forrest, which is known for having great mountain biking trails. So on Saturday, we tackled several of them, and it was a lot of fun. There wasn't any wildlife on the trails like there is at Lysterfield, but the routes were well marked and built for optimum mountain biking enjoyment. After a few hours on the trails, we enjoyed a cider and beer at the local brewery. Zack was able to create our own little "firepit" that night at our campsite, and we enjoyed a warm dinner followed by S'mores.

Lake Elizabeth was formed when heavy rains caused a landslide which flooded the forest. The lake has strange looking tree trunks still sticking out of it. But the coolest part is that you can see a platypus here! I guess six or seven of them live here, and if you go out at dusk or dawn, you can catch a glimpse of them. I went out on Saturday evening, but it was too dark to spot any by the time I got to the lake. However, I did get to see the glow worms. In the bush along the path leading to the lake, you can see hundreds of little lights at night. It looked like my walk was illuminated by lots of tiny stars, but I've read that the light actually comes from the silk threads spewed out by silkworms. They have sticky glowing beads on them to attract insects, and the worms eat them once caught. It looked really neat. 

I went for an early walk on Easter morning and did see a couple of platypus. Sorry...no pictures...by the time I realized I was seeing one (which just looked like a lump in the water), it would go back underwater. We headed back home to unpack our camping gear and went out for a delicious Mexican brunch in St Kilda to celebrate Easter. We hope you had a nice holiday too!

Mountain Biking and a Monotreme

Zack tackles an obstacle with ease.

On Saturday, Zack and I drove to Lysterfield Park to do some mountain biking. This park, which is about forty-five minutes away from our place, has tons of trails through the woods. We rode some good singletrack, especially enjoying the trails that were specifically for bikers. My favorite part was finding wallabies and kangaroos throughout our ride. You haven't really lived until a mother and baby kangaroo hop across the path in front of you while you're biking!

I wanted a shot with me riding near the pretty flowers.

There were also tons of butterflies flying around, just like on our Great Ocean Road hike, and pretty purple wildflowers along the path. There were some challenging, technical parts, which Zack could handle better than me, and some of the uphill sections kicked my butt, but it was still a good time.

These two kangaroos later hopped in front of me on the bike path!

On our drive out of the park, Zack yelled "porcupine" and hit the brakes. I immediately knew that he had seen an echidna (pronounced uh-KID-nuh), and I'd been wanting to see one in the wild for a long time. I raced out of the car with my camera, and sure enough, this spiky guy was crawling around in the grass near the road!





Echidnas are also known as spiny anteaters. The bottom left of this picture shows its pointy snout. Along with the platypus, echidnas are the only monotremes (egg-laying mammals) in the world, and they can only be found in Australia and New Guinea. Pretty cool, huh?

As we got closer, this echidna balled up and stuck out his spines. This picture shows a close-up of the prickly-ness. We didn't try to pet it!

Mountain biking in Australia is a bit different than it was in Colorado or Utah. Kangaroos instead of deer surprise you in the woods. Dirt paths with tree roots are more common than the red, rocky terrain. Butterflies surround your head instead of mountaintop views, and an echidna might cross your path instead of a rattlesnake. I'll take it for now!

The Rest of Last Weekend

Besides going to the footy game, we did a few other fun things last weekend. On Friday, Zack was in the mood to go to a play at some sort of small theatre. So I found the Red Stitch Theatre on Chapel Street, and they were performing The Aliens, which is actually an American play! We grabbed a few pizza slices before the show and went inside with our drinks. The theatre only holds about eighty people, so we were super close to the stage. There were only three characters in the show and one set, but it was pretty interesting. We got our culture fix.

On Saturday, Zack and I went to Lysterfield Park. This is a place about forty-five minutes outside of Melbourne, and it's full of trails through the woods. Zack mountain biked with a friend while I went for a run around the lake. I was (and still am) so jealous that Zack got to see kangaroos on his ride, and I didn't get to see any. He didn't have his phone with him, so he couldn't even take pictures. Someday I'm going to see Australian animals in the wild-argh! I didn't run with my camera, but I managed to snap this lame picture to give you an idea of the area. You could spend hours exploring the trails at this place!

It looks like it may be a rainy, cold weekend in Melbourne, so I'm not sure if we'll follow our original plan to go surfing tomorrow. We'll see!