Walk in the park

I spent a day in the Royal National Park with a friend. What we thought would be a nice walk in the park in fact was - with some interesting twists!!!

On the way to the park, there was suddenly a special car behind us with lights on top and a siren. We stopped to face the questions "Is this your car?" "Have you been drinking any alcohol today?" "How long have you been in Australia?" "...and there are no problems with your visa?" ......... it was a random stop looking for people drinking and driving on the long weekend.

After clearance from the nice officer, we were on our way and started the walk - along the beach, off the beach along the coast, up a hill, down a hill, up a hill, down a hill, up a hill - well, you get the picture... and speaking of pictures, here's one from the top of one hill. At the bottom is a nice beach and a camping area. Our initial plan was to camp here; but a few things didn't work out for that to happen, so one day will do for now.






And the view from on another hill...





The result of finding the leech AFTER it found it's way up my pant leg and had it's fill!!!





We walked a number of km's; up and down a few hills, through some bush, along some beaches, and down a road. We had cloud cover, sunshine, more cloud, rain, thunder, and a little more sun. With the exception of snow, hail, and frostbite, the weather was pretty much a typical summer day in Saskatchewan! I even got some colour on my skin! Just to add to the adventure, we managed to find a few different blood sucking varieties of creatures. I killed a mosquito (I think this was the 7th one I've seen in Australia (so much for the Aussie claims of having lots of them!!!!!!!!!!), pulled a wood tick out of Juergen's skin, and found one more variety - leeches.

On one stretch of trail we tackled through a heavy downpour, we each managed to clear at least a dozen leeches off our clothing. We were soaked through from the rain, tired from an early morning and a lot of walking, and hungry. Having thoroughly checked our clothing and bags for any more suckers, we got on in car and headed home. We hadn't even made it out of the park when I found another leech crawling up my hand. I quickly pulled over and sent it out the window. Back on the road, I looked down and found yet more - two climbing up my pants - not a good thing when behind the wheel. Managed to safely get them out of the car and kept going. Well, just to finish it all off, shortly before arriving home, I felt something different inside my pant leg and thought I'd kill it before it got me. Too late. 4 hours later, I was still bleeding. Oh well, on the brighter side, the most pain was from changing the bandaging, and the pants are clean and stain free.

Upon arrival home, I checked everything again before entering the house, took a shower, bandaged the hole, and went out for a BBQ. All in all, it was a good day. Now it's time to recover:)