Away from Alice

We got out of here. That is, we had an 8-day trip to Sydney and Canberra.
It was supposed to start with a flight to Adelaide, connecting to Canberra. But how was I to know Alice Springs airport considers itself one of those real airports where you have to show up an hour before your flight and all? Whatever happened to, "No worries, Mate?" I'll tell you what happened - they announce your name once or twice about the time you're dropping your dog off at a friend's house and then they close the plane doors and you have to just, um, make other arrangements. So we did.

They couldn't get us to Canberra but they could fly us to Sydney.
I remembered Sydney and Canberra looking kinda close on the map and the lovely lady in front of us in line said, "Oh yes, and the drive is quite nice." So we did.

The entire trip then went in a similar, "Oh, I messed up, no I didn't, this is better," kind of way.
Example, as we came to our landing in Sydney, I looked out the window at the red-tiled roofs below; there was the Opera House, the blue harbour dotted with sparkling white sailboats, the bridge and.. what's that off the wing? a rainbow? No, a double rainbow! Seriously, it was like that the whole trip.
On landing, we got a nice rental car from nice people. We saw a Domino's Pizza (9 months without) and had a good dinner in our easily-found, comfy hotel room.
Next morning, I got my first real sausage and egg McMuffin in 9 months ("Now, made with pork!") and we headed off along the eastern coast of Australia.
It was a crisp, fall day. The sky was blue, the leaves were turning yellow and red, gold and brown. With the blue-grey of the eucalypts, it was quite a picture.
Oh, you want a real picture? Weeeeelllll, we decided to make a video of the adventure and I was rather neglectful of the still camera.

We did pull over early on the road to see the "Sublime Overlook." We had to see if the Aussie Highway Department idea of "sublime" was the same as ours.

Yep.

I'm telling you, the whole trip went this well.

Black cattle grazed on green hillsides rimmed with rock walls. We stopped in a little town called Berry with hot donuts, antique shops and little cafes. If not for the wombat crossing signs, it could have been Virginia on any October weekend. Even Thomas saw the similarities.

We reached Canberra about dinner time and found our hotel - next to the park, across from the walking mall.

More tomorrow, it's midnight.