Aussie blog

If you have not read my post in a few days....I posted yesterday as well. My running group has a blog (gogettagirlskingaroy.blogspot.com) and they posted a blog in my honor. It was after running my 1/2 marathon. I thought I would copy it for you all to read.....

"The Go Getta Girls gave Letitia the good oil about the Gold Coast half marathon so she gave it a burl while living down under.Letitia played it by ear, packed her port and hit the frog and toad. She had a bonzer drive from woop woop to the big smoke to run an Aussie half marathon.Up at sparrow fart for a bite of brekkie then skedaddle by shankys's pony to join her good mate Alexia. Stone the crows they both remembered their wadjamacallit thingummyjig tied to their shoe. It was to the dunny for one last tinkle then off to find a pozzy at the start line. Well they couldn’t get with in cooee of the start, it was chockas. Bob’s your uncle it was time to bolt.No kiddin, they ran the race at a crackin’ pace, I’ll give ya the drum. Good onya Letitia, our ridgy-didge dinky-di Sheila."

Great Barrier Reef and Ayers Rock

Zip lining through the rain forest

family dive on the great barrier



RT enjoying the ride on zip line (sorry pic is out of order)

Cas posing by creek

RT and kids debating whether or not to jump into the freezing creek.

They eventually made it in for about 5 minutes

Kids warming in the sun after chilly swim

The boys went exotic fruit shopping and brought back some for a tasting.

We had black sopote, mangosteen, durien, passionfruit, etc.

Cheese tasting at a dairy in Northern Queensland

There are 5 beautiful waterfalls and 2 volcanic lakes within about 10 miles of each other. After visiting them all, we stopped at a sweet tea house and had yummy sandwiches made with homemade bread.

one of the waterfalls

We kept seeing the sign for the fig tree while visiting the waterfalls. We did not think that we needed to stoop so low as a tourist to look at a fig tree, at the last minute we drove the 2 kilometers out of the way and we saw this magnificent tree. Being a tourist isn't so bad after all.

Ayers Rock (Uluru). O.K. I have to admit I was not overly anxious to travel long distances to see a rock. Once again, my underestimation of a tourist sight proved me wrong. This is one big rock. It took us about 2 1/2 hours to walk around it at a fast pace. It was interesting to hear the aboriginal stories that went with the markings on the rock.

This was on the top of my list of things that I wanted to do in Australia. We took a camel ride out to see the sun setting over the rock. Abbie and I rode "trevor". He was a 6 year old camel that had recently came from the wild

The Olgas (Kata Tjuta) are about 20 miles from Uluru. They are not a monolith but just - if not more- impressive. We went on an 8 kilometer walk through them. If you look closely at this, RT is in the bottom center of the picture.

another pic of us hiking in the Olgas. Hats off to our kids. This was rated as a difficult hike. They hiked it with minimal complaining.

Wild camels in AU!! Yes, many people probably do not know that there are over 1,000,000 camels living in the outback. AU now exports camels to Saudi Arabia.

We had a wonderful 10 days exploring the Daintree rainforest, great barrier reef, and the Ayers Rock region with our good friends from the states. We were completely overwhelmed with our mighty God's creative ability. The rainforest possessed every color of green imaginable, the great barrier surprised us with the coolest fish and colorful coral, the rock was so mammoth and was such a stark contrast to the flat outback that we had to sit back and wonder why God put it in such a place. Even our kids asked why God put Ayers Rock there. While at Ayers Rock we had an astronomer (who gave credit to God for creating the sky) who explained to us the different constellations which we observed through a telescope. WHAT AN AMAZING GOD WE SERVE!!

The night before the run


carb loading at an Italian restuarant the night before the run. Pictured are RT, Me and my running friend Alexia


The morning of the run (4:30 a.m.) I am wearing my "proud to be an American" in honor of the Fourth of July



I was able to get showered after I ran 21k and before RT finished. This is RT about 30 minutes after he finished running 42K.

Sorry about the sideways pics. I do not have the time to figure out how to turn them. Wanted to get them posted