Stockton Beach and Nelson Bay

Started the weekend off with a bit of tourist shopping. Got to get surprises for the kids and Aussie stuff for people back home. Saturday, Mic picked me up in his 4x4 and we headed to Stockton Beach NSW for a bit of off-roading. I forgot my camera so the photos you will see are linked from Wikipedia. We shot several photos with Mic's camera and he is burning me a CD. I saw my first shipwreck from here. IT is called the MV Sygna and about half of it has been sitting on the coas since the seventies.




We spent a couple of hours off-roading in the dunes. The sand is beautiful white and very smooth.

Here you can see a photo of the beach that seems to run forever. We stopped and swam for a bit but there were bluebottles (jellyfish) all over so we had to be careful. I got a bit too much sun.


Sunday I attended church with Kerrie and Rick former YWAM missionaries. They are really great people who I enjoyed getting to know. It was a nice casual service and the pastor has a real heart for the lost.

Later they drove me to Nelson Bay to get some fish-n-chips. I love this opportunity to get so much fresh seafood. For dessert I had some Tiramisu ice cream.... MMMMMM...

We worked off the deep fried food (and sweets) with a nice hike up one of the local lookouts. Here you can see Rick and Kerrie on the trail that is paved with nice bricks most of the way up. It reminded me of the yellow brick road.




Starting about half way up there were very large scary spiders hanging over our heads, I tried to get some photos of them but only one turned out very well. If you look at the photo below you can see one hanging from the tree. At one point in the hike, the realization of how many spiders were over me that I wasn't even aware of game me a full-body-shiver.

When you get to the top of the lookout, the view is spectacular. See the photo below.


I tried to get a quick video of some of the view as well. This is a pretty popular place for whale watching. I saw a couple of dolphins on the way down.





After this hike I was soaking wet with sweat. The humidity was so high you cannot help but get sweaty. The cool think though was that unlike in Colorado if you get the least bit out of breath it only takes a couple seconds to catch it again. Gotta love sea level oxygen.

We walked through the touristy area of Nelson Bay and I enjoyed looking at the boats on the docks.




As I am pasting this post to the web (Monday morning) the Superbowl is beginning in the US (Sunday evening) Go Giants!