Monday and Tuesday - January 19th & 20th, 2009 Heading Home

Monday we spent the day shopping for a few last minute take home items, then got all our bags organized and weighed so that we would not have any challenges at the check in. Then we were free to wander around, so Barb went for a walk to check out places for our last dinner in Australia. Of the two places she checked on, the first choice was closed for supper, and the second had no customers, so we enjoyed a beer and headed back to the motel to pick up the car for further searching. We ended up enjoying a delightful dinner in a small steak and seafood restaurant about 10 minutes from the motel.
Tuesday we headed out early – being a little cautious about finding our way to the airport. It went so smoothly, that when we checked in we were the first to arrive for our flight. This allowed us time to pick up the few items we hadn’t been able to find yesterday. One thing we purchased was a hand painted Boomerang. As we bought it in the airport in Melbourne we thought nothing about taking in on the plane, however, when Harry left it on the seat in the airplane in Sydney, we learned that it was a weapon and not welcome on the flight from Sydney to LA, this meant a bit of reorganizing and running around (by Barb) to get it put into the computer bag and checked. The computer remained on board with us. The rest of the trip was fairly smooth, except that Barb left her waist purse on the plane – more running around, but all was found. And now as we sit in the LA Airport awaiting our last flight home we have time to reflect a bit on the trip.

It has been an amazing almost 6 weeks. No including getting there and coming back, we travelled about 16,715 KM, 8,500 KM by air, 465 by bus and the rest 7750 by car – of which about 5975 were in Australia. We saw drought-starved land in Victoria and deserts in the Northern Territory that have had so much rain that they are unusually green. We have been in temperatures approaching 40 C and enjoyed swimming in beautiful oceans that were well over 20 C. We had wonderful conversations with so many folks, some in stores and restaurants, some just on the street. We feel that we have been really blessed to have been able to make this trip together be talking at the end. We returned home to sub zer temperatures (just a bit) and a fog that had been hanging around for 15 days, and left over snow from Chirstmas. We look forward to future trips to other lands.
Watch for the blog which we hope to post when Marcus and Barb go to Kenya this summer, and next year when Harry and Barb are hosting a trip to Europe to see among other things the Passion Play in Oberammergau.