Posts tagged ‘road trip’

August 10th, 2010

When an Itinerary is Necessary

I hate planning itineraries, and I hate being confined to a limited amount of time. Open-ended is the way I roll.

In the “How I Travel” series of articles for BootsnAll, the first five platform writers were interviewed, and this is a direct quote that I gave. I really feel a bit stressed when it comes to planning a day-to-day itinerary that may or may not depend on completing one task in time to take on another. At this point, it has a way of becoming a chore and not the free-flowing trip that I normally enjoy. Why is it then – if I feel so passionately about this fact – that I have been spending the past couple of weeks trying to put together a road trip itinerary?!

Because sometimes it is necessary. Sometimes, time cannot be extended and plans cannot flow – or else you risk missing out on too much. I normally loathe an itinerary, but this journey I’m about to take calls for it. This plan is EPIC.

australia road trip map

Ok, well maybe not epic as in I’m taking a year to travel about Australia while living off the land and sleeping in the bush. No, definitely not epic like that. However, it is epic in the sense that we will be covering a heck of a lot of ground in only 16 days!

I’m so insanely excited for this trip as I actually have a travel partner in crime — the lovely Heather from There’s No Place Like Oz. We are going to be driving from Cairns to Sydney while seeing sights such as the Great Barrier Reef, Daintree Rainforest and Fraser Island. I’ve never been diving before, but we’ll both have an introductory go right on the reef.

In hopes of saving money, we are going to attempt to camp along the way. I’m definitely not a camper, but I’m hoping I’ll be too worn out after long days of touring and exploring that I just won’t care. As long as there are no giant spiders attacking me, I’m sure I’ll be fine…. but this is Australia, right?

If you’d like to follow along (and I hope that you do), you can join the WhyGo Australia Facebook page. We have an event that will be tracking our progress, hopefully with daily photos and updates along the way. It would be cool to get some feedback and support from lovely people like you, especially after I’ve had my first encounter of the insect kind!

Well, I’d love to stay and chat longer about it, but my flight leaves tomorrow in the early morning. I must finish packing!

Photo credit.

CategoryAustralia | Comment13 Comments »

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January 9th, 2010

Broken Hill Road Trip – A Taste of the Outback

For part of my recent holiday, I decided to go the non-traditional route here and avoid the beaches in hopes of getting a little taste of the Australian Outback.

So, I went on a road trip with Patrick all the way out to the farthest Western reaches of New South Wales in order to visit an oasis in the middle of nowhere – Broken Hill. The drive was long – about 15 hours each way – so we made sure to break it up with overnight stopovers in places we hadn’t been before. All in all, it was a journey of about 3000km, 28 kangaroo roadkills and plenty of sunshine.

The journey took us from Sydney to Cobar, Broken Hill, Silverton, Menindee, White Cliffs, Dubbo and back to Sydney. It definitely was not the original route planned, but that’s what happens when you fail to notice that many of the outback roads are not paved and therefore unsuitable for normal cars traveling long distances. Woops!

All in all, it was a week of hits and misses, but still adventure nonetheless. It was a perspective of big and small, a realization of droughts and floods and just a great time to get out of Sydney!

Of course there are a few aspects of the trip I’d like to elaborate on in further posts, but until then I thought I’d give you all a better picture through some photos.

[singlepic id=1398 w=320 h=240 float=left]Desolate:

This is a rest stop on the side of the road about 13 hours away from Sydney and truly in the middle of nowhere.

We had to stop and eat the fruit we had brought from home because we were about to enter the fruit fly exclusion zone.

Nothing else in sight here – just the road and the sky.

[singlepic id=1406 w=320 h=240 float=left]Interesting:

Outside of Broken Hill is a sculpture site where art was made by sculptors from around the world. The site is up on a hill and provides an amazing view of Broken Hill and the desolate lands that surround it.

In order to drive to the top, you have to pick up a key to the park from the information center in town – and then proceed to unlock various gates along the road.

For the view reason alone, it is worth a visit. However, we feel that the sculptures were far from art and that the creators were simply a big group of stoners.

[singlepic id=1438 w=320 h=240 float=left]Funny:

This sign was near some grapevines on a hotel in Broken Hill. It was nice of them to warn people that the grapes weren’t ripe yet, yeah?

I thought so, too!

Anyway, that’s a start to explaining my latest adventure, but stay tuned as there will be plenty more to come!

CategoryAustralia | Comment4 Comments »

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