Madison, WI to Gold Coast, QLD, Australia

I meant to fill in some more background, about how I got here, but for now I will just pick up where we are. The past couple of weeks have been somewhat of a blur. After a brief visit with a friend in Mesa, who put us up with such grace, style and love (thank you again, Christina), we spent a lovely relaxing week in Roosevelt, Arizona, with Shawn's parents, including a visit from his oldest sister and her husband. The trip from Phoenix to Roosevelt in our intrepid little rental car was a bit more "exciting" than we anticipated. Pro Tip: When the lady from Alaska tells you that the road you are taking is a bit rough and maybe best not traveled after dark, believe her. ;) Almost 40 miles of narrow mountain roads with hairpin turns, including 22 miles of single-lane gravel "washboard" road complete with multiple one-lane bridges later, we arrived safely at the RV park and were greeted with love and a spaghetti dinner. Our "honeymoon cabin" was the camper on the back of the truck, and it was quite blissful. We saw the sights of the desert, seguaro cactus, cliff dwellings and red rock canyons, between eating, drinking and merry socializing. We definitely plan on spending more time in that area when we can.

Me and my sister-in-law Raeanna

Right before hitting the Apache Trail...beware dotted-line "roads" on maps.

Being one with the Seguaro

On 11 March, we set off from the Phoenix airport, en route to Brisbane, Australia, via Los Angeles, Fiji, and Sydney. About 40 hours from start to finish. Fortunately, Air Pacific and Qantas take much better care of their passengers than modern U.S. domestic airlines currently do. We met some interesting people on the flights, including a lovely Canadian woman who home-schools, and an Englishwoman who lives in Germany and who is the author of a book entitled "Cooking Weeds." International travelers do seem quite different from the Americans I am used to seeing on domestic flights in the states. It might just be my own observational bias, but people seemed more calmly friendly, less wealthy (in general) and, in the relatively small sample we had more than passing contact with, more liberal in their view of society and the world.

Fiji airport

We arrived in Brisbane late on Tuesday afternoon, 13 March. We had decided to get a hotel in the city, and  to have a nice dinner and a good night's sleep before striking out for Gold Coast on Wednesday. Using the various resources available at the airport, we found a place, made a call from the courtesy phone and took the train to the city center.

The hotel was a small B & B type place; we had requested the "en suite" room-- having our own bathroom was really important at this stop, since it was a luxury we would not be enjoying again for some time. Shawn had managed to sleep a bit more in the air than I had, but both of us were quite sleep deprived, not to mention time-zone-scrambled. Our hotel was walking distance to a major shopping and entertainment district, so we got to see some of Brisbane night life (for a Tuesday night anyway) and had dinner in an outdoor cafe. Seafood reigns on the coast, so we had calamari and a seafood pizza. The food was ok, and the service marginal, but we enjoyed the ambiance and were pretty hungry, so it seemed wonderful to our dazed selves.

We took full advantage of all that our hotel offered us-- a firm and comfy bed, air conditioning, a beautiful new bathroom and shower, and electricity to charge all the electronics up fully. After a solid sleep, we had breakfast in our room, consisting of toast, cereal ("Rice Bubbles" complete with Snap, Crackle and Pop on the box), orange juice, tea and instant coffee. Check-out time was 9:30, so we packed up and stowed our bags in a storage room at the hotel, so we could go back downtown to the Telestra store to get a mobile WiFi hotspot device, that will serve as our connection to the world wherever we can get cell signal. Then, back to the train station with our 150 pounds of luggage (downhill this time, thankfully) to catch the train from Brisbane to Gold Coast.