Our Four Day Roadtrip.

     So it seems I'm back quite early from what was going to be a month long roadtrip down the coast. Well we found out that it is actually illegal to camp in your car anywhere besides a caravan/camping site. Which means we would have had to pay whenever we wanted to park to sleep. I hope you're not too disappointed, but we still had a fantastic time and I got to see the Sydney Opera House and kangaroos! Let me tell you how it happened.

     When we arrived in Coolangatta that first night we were so excited for the days to come and to walk around the next day. We were parked right by the beach, bathrooms, and across the street from a coffeehouse with live music. Unfortunately, it was also right next to the main road and people like to drive fast and loud at night.

    We had some Pizza Hut for dinner and relaxed in our bed before going to sleep around 9ish (it gets dark way early here and we were already tired). I slept decent that first night, but for Anthony it was a different story. For a 6' 1" guy in a twin bed air mattress in the back of a Holden Commodore, you don't have much room to get comfortable. There was also no air flow whatsoever, even with the windows cracked, so it got hot pretty fast.

     We walked around the area, bought some groceries, and relaxed by the beach during the day. I took a nap around lunch time because I'm not used to waking up when the sun does. After lunch we started talking about how much we miss our families, how uncomfortable our first sleep was, and what we should do about our money situation. So we came to the conclusion that it wasn't necessary for us to stop at every destination on the list because:   A. that would get expensive pretty quick, B. there wasn't much to do in each place, and C. we wanted to sleep in the car as least as possible. So we headed off for our next stop at 3pm, Coffs Harbor.

     We reached Coffs Harbor at dark so it was more difficult to find a place to park and set up bed for the night. We actually ended up moving from our first spot to a mall parking lot. It just seemed safer with the lights in the parking lot. We just had to wake up earlier to be sure that we didn't get into any trouble. We woke up around 7am to birds cawing right outside our car, fighting over garbage to eat. So we moved all our stuff around again and headed to look for another spot.

     Our first intention was to park somewhere and sleep a bit longer, but then we just decided to start getting things ready to head on. We stopped by the jetty in Coffs Harbor to look out over the horizon. It was beautiful, but I was too tired and grumpy to take the camera out to get pictures that early, ha! They were also doing some sort of race on the beach/harbor, there were people in kayaks doing laps around buoys. On our way to the information center, we found a lookout point which was on a big hill and it overlooked the entire harbor.

   
     Then we found out that the information center had actually moved to the Big Banana, which was going to be our last stop before driving to the next city! So that turned out perfectly. We took some pictures at the big banana with a normal banana, and walked through the gift shop. Then we left for the city of Sydney! We wanted to leave early enough so we could see the Opera House in the daylight, so we had to make good time!

     The drive to Sydney was a longer one, but I saw SO many kangaroos, cows, horses, sheep, and farm land! There are so many different views in Australia, and it's beautiful. We managed to get to Sydney and find parking with enough daylight to walk to the Opera House and take pictures. If you ever get the chance to see the Sydney Opera House, take it. It is such a beautiful, and big building! And although there are very beautiful pictures of the Opera House, it doesn't compare to the entire experience of the people and the sounds, and the smell of the salt water.
   

     After taking some photos, we left the city and went to look for one of Anthony's friends houses to see if we could stay for the night. So we had some more Pizza Hut, and waited around to see if we had a room for the night. We found out that we were unable to stay in Sydney, so we drove to a town outside of city in the direction we thought we would continue going in and got a hotel room for the night. I can't tell you how grateful we were to have hot showers and a bed to sleep in. I know we only went two days sleeping in the back of a car and going without showers, but it was so great to be in a bedroom! We contacted our family back home to discuss our trip and our vacation time here. We also found out from the receptionist that camping in your car is illegal in Australia. That's when we decided that it wasn't worth possibly getting a ticket, and that we would rather spending money from camping sites towards gifts or early tickets home.

     So we left the next morning at about 10 am from Sydney to drive the 10-11 hour trip back to Minyama. It was a long car trip, but we had such a blast. We saw a small pack of camels on a farm, and I had Anthony stop the car so I could run by the road and get some sweet shots of a HUGE troop (word of the day!) of kangaroos! We had pizza, again, for dinner that night but we kept driving to make it back to the house by 10 pm. So we got to sleep in a real bed again, and that ended our roadtrip!

     So now we're staying with some other great friends, Ryan and Sarah, and they are the sweetest, most adorable, and most perfect couple I've ever had the pleasure of meeting here! They are letting us stay here in their apartment until we leave Australia to head back to our home in Missouri. I can't put into words how grateful and blessed I am to have been able to see such a beautiful place with beautiful people, but I am also very happy to be going home soon.

     I still have quite a few posts to share with you from different events here in Australia. And we still have quite a few things we would like to do before leaving that I will share with you all! So keep checking back for new posts, and I'll keep you updated! Thank you all for stopping by!