Wild Wild West and Dinosaurs Galore

So, we drove five hours across mountains and lakes and cliffs and forest and finally arrived in good old Strahan. Unfortunately, our guidebooks seem to have mislead us because this place isn't all that spectacular. Ok I'm gonna say it...we miss home!! Tasmania is a very, very low key place. Things to do here: beach, expensive cruise down a river, go see some guys collection of wood that naturally looks like animals, and go see a play about convicts. I guess it does look like the wild west though. And it's definitely hot enough!!

Went to the beach today (it was 34 degrees C which is about 92 degrees F I think) but the water was brown and there were huuuge flies. Gross!! Beach was gorgeous other than that, huge waves and pretty mist and mountains in the background. Apparently there were a bunch of beached whales a month ago and they brought all the flies with them. However. Instead of being negative nancys, we decided a day at the beach with bugs is better than being home in the cold so we took our first jumping photos and pictures doing the fly swatting dance to commemorate our time in the west.

After the beach we found a hiking trail up to a waterfall. Nothing spectacular but it was still pretty and nice to get out of the car!

Then karina and I came back to our honeymoon suite (our first private room!!) and cooked Dinosaur pasta for dinner. The australian open is still on so we watched some of nadal! Lindsey that uber dorky picture of me in my tie-dye shirt and glasses with dinos is for you :) aren't I the best big sister ever?!?

We looked everywhere for wi fi but no such luck, sorry everyone for not being in touch. Now we're hanging out having girls night, painting our nails and gossiping. We survived the day!!

Edit: by looked everywhere we mean... Drove our little car in front of every store/restaurant in attempt to get free wifi from the street. This involved about 23575 u-turns and occasional reversing to get better signal. Then when I couldn't log on I'd tell karina and she'd drive us to the next spot. Real teamwork. Oh life on the road...

We were gonna spend tomorrow here too but we decided to move ahead with our plans and head to a place called Mount Cradle/Lake St Claire (or as Karina keeps thinking, mt. Saint cloud??) for some hiking and swimming. Tuesday, Wednesday and thursday were going to Port Arthur which is where a massacre took place and they used to send convicts from "the big island" aka the rest of Australia. There's a Tasmanian devil sanctuary there where we can feed kangaroos and hold devils! We're also going to this park called Freycinet national park that has lakes and hiking and one of the top ten beaches in the world called Wineglass Beach. We leave Friday for Melbourne!

We'll be in touch when we can.

Side note: karina is currently running around the room trying to kill a scorpion-looking spider (a small one). She got it! But it fell in her bathing suit...more shrieking...success! First official spider/scorpion killing! I'm such a great girlfriend watching her run around like a crazy person :)