fun blue mountains times
Public holidays are fantastic. And so today, Debbie and I headed out west to the Blue Mountains. Didn’t really have anything specific planned - but we had packed lunch, and just had to find somewhere to eat it. What we did along the way was just gonna be random. I think I’ll tell this story with the help of my tweets.
hooray for almost good weather for Debbie & James’ blue mountains adventure.
Woke up to cloudiness, but it wasn’t raining and the skies didn’t look as threatening. But after packing the last of the lunch stuff and heading down to the car, it started to rain slightly. Only a little though.
that’s the fun thing about living out west - only 20 mins from the bottom of the blue mountains! stopped in Blaxland for coffee for James.
You didn’t think I could get by without having a coffee just cos it’s a public holiday did you? I was amazed I found somewhere open. This place was just a bakery, but they did coffee too. And it was surprisingly not bad!
traffic jam in Woodford. not fun. starting to sprinkle a bit. music change time. just listened to Playjerise.
Traffic jam #1 happened in Woodford. Was caused by a combo of roadworks and just merging and traffic lights all at once. Playjerise had gotten us all the way up into the mountains.
clearly everyone else in sydney thought it would be fun to come up to the blue mountains today! listening to Jesus Freak. best album.
The worse traffic jam happened up a little further in Lawson. No one moved a single millimetre for about 10 minutes. Never found out why. But at this time, a quick glance of the street directory, and I was off down Badgery Cres, which eventually becomes Railway Pde, and after much winding and fun, ends up in Wentworth Falls. We headed into Wentworth Falls so I could show Debbie the awesome house that we usually stay at for KCC conventions.
back roads in the mountains are awesome for avoiding traffic! stopped at leura halfway along the fun back road into Katoomba.
From Wentworth Falls, we crossed over the highway and started the fun back road into Katoomba, and stopped at Leura, which was easily the busiest place in the mountains on Anzac Day. We wandered around some shops and bought a couple of presents - I even got to wander through a nice wine cellar! But it was all too expensive. Then it was back on into Katoomba.
driving round the wonderful Cliff Drive looking out the lookouts and taking fun photos.
listening to The Fray.
It wasn’t planned, but we headed down into the depths of Katoomba and drove around Cliff Drive, stopping at most of the lookouts and just enjoying the views and the crazy fog.
up at Mt York… just near Mt Victoria. finally found somewhere to have lunch. stoked that there’s phone reception here!
We drove through Blackheath, stopping to see an awesome house my relatives own and wondering when we should ask them to borrow it for a weekend. Couldn’t find anywhere nice to eat, and so continued up to Mt Victoria. I then remembered someone telling me about how nice Mt York is, and given it’s only 5km away, we headed there.
We found an amazing lookout that no one was at. Unfortunately no picnic tables though, and the ground was a bit slopey. So it was a picnic sitting in the back of the car for us! Quite fun. We enjoyed our cheese and biscuits, pull-apart bread, our premade salads and our apple juice poppers. We had a look down into Hartley Valley for a while from the lookout, but then it was time to start heading back down to Sydney - it had basically taken us 4 hours to get to Mt Victoria :)
Stopped by the Hydro Majestic for a drink, but couldn’t find the cafe part. Now in Leura again looking for a cafe that has a seat.
Lots of police were hanging out near the Hydro doing breath tests… on both sides of the road! But we couldn’t find that nice cafe place, and so we headed back down thinking we might stop at Leura again for a coffee…
never did find a cafe with room. and I was too impatient to wait :) back on the road down the mountains, listening to cat empire.
…but wandering around Leura again found it to be even busier than earlier this morning, and not being the most patient person in the world, and really not wanting to queue for a seat in a cafe, we headed back to the car and continued on down the mountains, with a quick stop for petrol.
home again. nap time.
We actually ended up getting home a lot quicker than I thought we would. That last part of the mountains and then down the M4 always seems quicker each time I drive it. And after lots of driving, I really felt like a nap.
And that was the Commodore’s last big adventure. There’s more to come on that story…
Debbie took plenty of photos, and I’m sure they’ll end up on her facebook tomorrow. They were fun photos. I’ll post a link soon - cos I still can’t work out why images don’t align properly and why they do weird things on my blog. I think I’m gonna give up on that soon and just get a new theme.
