Blue Mountain Bush Walks

Time to say "good-bye" to the city and head west about 2 hours into the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

Amazing how crammed a 12 passenger van can be with 8 people and their 'stuff'! Logan named the van Abraham, "because," he said, "Abraham had great faith and so do we." Love his confidence.

The Blue Mountains are about 1000 meters in height (just over 3000 feet) and I must admit, I wasn't expecting them to be anywhere near as spectacular as they were. I was anticipating something like the Appalachian Mountains here in the U.S. which are certainly beautiful, but not sure I'd always label them spectacular. But the Blue Mountains are quite different and definitely spectacular!

They are densely populated by oil bearing Eucalyptus trees. The atmosphere is filled with finely dispersed droplets of oil, which, in combination with dust particles and water vapor, scatter short-wave length rays of light which are predominantly blue in color. Thus the name!

We hiked and hiked and hiked for 3 days seeing all sort of beautiful cliffs, waterfalls...

and flowers that were foreign to us.

The 3 pointed rocks in the background are known as the Three Sisters

So, of course, we had to get a picture of the 3 sisters in front of the Three Sisters.

We crossed streams...

pushed our way through dense ferns (always on the lookout for all of the deadly snakes that Australia is famous for! Thankfully, didn't see a one)...

And stopped for morning tea under a giant rock... (yes, 10am is morning tea time in Australia. Usually doesn't involved any tea, but is just a nice snack time.)

We hiked down to the valley which was a beautiful, dense rain forest.

Micah had the best ride on Daddy's back!

Arvo (afternoon) tea consisted of these fun little cookies (known as biscuits in Oz)

As we were munching away, we let Micah continue his nap in the back pack carrier. Apparently, a big juicy rain forest leach thought his sweet, chubby little leg looked like a good place for a snack (unbeknownst to us!) Once Rich loaded him back up and they were happily hiking along, Rich was feeding him some of those yummy koala biscuits (aka bikkies). All of a sudden Micah started fussing and refusing the bikkies. Not characteristic of our little man to refuse a sweet treat. Rich asked me to check if his foot had gotten caught in the carrier. I screamed when I saw the slimy black thing sucking my baby's blood! And since we were hours from any salt to properly detach the thing, Rich quickly flicked it off. 

Caleb and Rich are always looking for an excuse to do crazy stunts. Here Rich is lowering Caleb over the edge to retrieve a water bottle cap that had rolled away.

So proud of Anna as she hiked the entire time - several miles each day. I think she was hoping this mule would take her back to the top of the mountain where our bush walk had begun.

Never fear! We hitched a ride on this train back to the top. Steepest one in the world at a 52 degree incline!

The more we travel and see across this great earth of ours, the more I am amazed and in awe of the creativity and beauty of God. We truly relished in the sights we enjoyed and sing praises to our Creator God.

God really ministered to our family during his time. The days and weeks leading up to this adventure had been crazy busy and it was quite nice to have some alone family time to relax, be silly together and to just 'be' together. Although, our legs walked away from our mountain time screaming sore, our spirits were soothed and refreshed. What a joy our family is! Rich and I are constantly amazed at the joy our children bring to us (when the world continually says they're a burden). But they're really a lot of fun!