Wednesday August 28....The Grampians

We got up and went for breakfast in Hamilton, and picked up a few groceries for the drive.  Attempted our first cache, but could not find it.  It was supposed to be an easy one, but not for us! 

We headed east to return to Melbourne today, deciding to take it a little slower and abandon our idea of swinging up to try and get into NSW.  The first part of the drive was much like yesterday, with lots of sheep farms along the way.  We started to get into more treed areas....arbutus and eucalyptus groves.  We stopped in the small town of Dunkeld for a few caches, and continued on our streak of NOT finding them.  Those were rated very easy and, as it turned out, we later found quite a few "difficult" ones.  Maybe we were overthinking things.....

From Dunkeld, we headed North for a beautiful drive through the Grampians National Park.  Mountains!!  We were up much higher, and in lovely Australian forests.  We stopped in a few places to get out and hear the birds and other animals.  We saw one kangaroo hopping at the 
side of the road but, unfortunately, we also saw a few NOT hopping any more.

Mount Sturgeon

The slide

One cache took us to the site of a massive slide from a few years back.  The pictures just can't portray the force that there must have been with the rocks and water pounding down the steep slope.  The boulders were huge.

We stopped for a little picnic in Halls Gap just before we exited the park.  It was a sunny day, just the right temperature for us.  The lady in the store told us that the temperature can get to 45* there in summer.  No thanks.  It looked like a place that would be very busy in summer with campers and hikers.  Lots of campgrounds, picnic areas, and hiking trails.  We also saw a class of students enjoying the park we were lunching in....and we smiled and said (again) how much we love retirement!!

Would you believe...an earth cache!!

A couple more hours of driving, and we were in Ballarat.  We stopped in this great "gold rush" town (again for Pam) to stretch our legs and learn a few things about the geological features of the area.  A nice town for walking, and the buildings are well preserved.  Just a good atmosphere here.

By this time, we realized that we were a little behind in our time frame to be back to Melbourne before dark.  We started back, and decided to let Marsha2 (the car GPS twin to Marsha that belongs to Val...) guide us home.  Aye yai yai!!!  She had us out on country roads in a very unnecessary and large loop just to get us back on the highway.  It was dark before we got back to the highway!  The drive was then another 90 minutes, but Pam was excellent in the driver's seat, Lori was a little "jumpy!"  But Marsha did redeem herself when we got to the city and we made it home without any catastrophes.

A long but very enjoyable day in the Australian countryside.  Made dinner, logged caches, and crashed!