June 4th, 2019
Today I woke up feeling a little better, but Brendan and I both continued to have lingering, annoying coughs. We felt we were ready to venture out of the city and go to the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountain area is a huge national park about 2.5 hours outside of Sydney. It has all kinds of hiking and camping. We didn’t have much of a plan but decided to head out anyway. We stopped along the way and picked up some camp stove fuel in case we found a spot to camp. We drove to the Katoomba entrance where there was a great lookout of the ‘Three Sisters’.
It was much cooler in the blue mountains so we bundled up as much as we could and set out on a hike. We warmed up quickly once we started hiking and going up and down many stairs. There were great viewpoints all through the hike. We went to a couple of waterfalls and hiked for about 3 hours. I was still not feeling very strong but WAY better than the previous two days and was thankful I was up for the hike.
After getting back to the car we explored by driving through the little towns and found a spot online that said camping was free. We then drove to a different part of the Blue Mountains National Park and found Old Ford Reserve Campsite. It was indeed free and so was the National Park. I thought it was extremely remarkable to not have to pay any entrance fees to hike or camp in the park. Brendan immediately got busy making a fire and I got our bed made up in the back of the car by putting the back seats down and blowing up our air pads.
We had our leftover spaghetti and made a new salad for dinner before we hunkered in and watched a downloaded movie on the iPad. The car was okay to sleep in but we learned that we needed to park on a slight decline because the head was higher than our feet and we kept sliding down towards the trunk in our bed. I had to sleep with my legs straight out ridged against the trunk to avoid sliding. If I did go to sleep and relax my legs, I would end up all scrunched down at the bottom of the trunk. We have slept in tougher conditions in the past and were happy we could turn on the car and warm it up when it got too cold.
That’s funny! You guys are pretty tough to be able to sleep in so many alternative situations! I can just imagine you in your sleeping bag (that looks like a black body bag to begin with) scrunched up in the trunk (YIKES!) I’m exceedingly grateful that you are still breathing, smiling and shooting peace signs! B sounds like a good camper (fire-maker) too – you have an excellent travel partner (with skills). Remember from Napolean Dynamite (girls like guys with skills, LOL)
lol 😀
Ditto to Andrea, I don’t think I have had the experience . But you two all are incredibly durable and flexible.