During the week hubby and I went for a drive while the kids were at school. There was no destination in mind, just a bit of exploring that took us through nearby national park and through areas we haven't been to in awhile. We LOVED it and not only because we took the time to spend time doing something we like together.
We also realised that it's been awhile since we've been on a family picnic so we decided that Saturday was the day for an outing. My brother and his boys were along for the day too so it ended up being a lovely outing (and noisy).
When we first left home there was a shower of rain before we even got to the Peachester range but the weather didn't look threatening. As much as I love rain, I'm not fond of it when we're going up and down dirt tracks on mountain ranges.
There was a couple of ranges with very windy roads on our way to our destination, the Peachester range and the Bellthorpe range. Thank goodness for motion sickness wrist bands which we now have a few of for Little Miss R. My petal only got queasy a couple of times on the trip and really enjoyed herself. This girl gets car sick on a straight, flat road so the wrist bands are definately the way to go.
After the Deer farm which excited the kidlettes no end, it was into the National forest and onto the dirt tracks. They began as fantastically smooth, well graded roads.
We stopped for morning tea at the Old Brandon Mill site which we thought would be great for the kids.
We explained some of the old machinery to them and the workings of a saw mill.
The were impressed briefly with it all and the fact that they have great-grandparents on both sides of the family who had bullock teams for hauling timber.
As with most kids though, climbing on things proved more popular than the educational side of things.
It didn't matter whether it was the dog crate on the back of the ute...
...or the crane pivot which proved the perfect place to pose.
After our snack stop it was time to head further into the forest. The roads became much more narrow and bumpy. I have plenty of photos where the trees are right next to the car and you're driving through a very narrow corridor along steep hillsides but they're a bit too blurry. It got slightly bumpy!
The kids loved driving through the creeks of course.
We ended up at Charlie Moorlands near Kenilworth for lunch. It's much drier there now than when the kidlettes and I camped there last year but at least the walking tracks are open again after the flooding from last year.
After lunch hubby and my brother took the kids for a walk while I cleared the picnic things up. I then followed on for a little while before realising I wasn't going to catch them up so I backtracked along the path and found a quiet spot to sit and wait. It was lovely.
We were all pretty knackered when we got home but it was such a lovely day. Hubby's home for a full weekend next weekend so we'll look at going somewhere different then.
xx Susan
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