Wonderful World (Chapter Seven: Sunshine Sunset)

Oh yea, here's the poster shot.  This is the sunset over a harbor up the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane, Australia.  Adam had asked me if I saw the Sunset my first night in Australia, because they are really awesome, but I slept through the one the first night and every night after the second night was overcast.  But it didn't matter, because I saw the perfect one already.

Of course getting here was no simple matter.  When we left the zoo, I looked at my ipad map and it was just a grey grid, but I distinctly remembered that the road to the zoo ran parallel to the highway north to the beach.  On the map in my memory, the road diverted from the highway and about half way up was the zoo and then in ran parallel until it met back up with the highway.  Very logical.  How can we go wrong--if we turn right (the correct right that is even right in Australia) we will go back to the place we got off the highway and simply turn back onto the highway North.  If we turn left (the real left, not just the Australian right) we will be going North and we will meet back up with the highway and we can continue North to the Sunshine Coast.  There was no way to go wrong... except that the road North was not one road going parallel--there was a fork in that road.  Logically, I would think that the ocean was on my right--we are in Australia (not California) going North, so east is to my right, but my right and left were really mixed up, so I just didn't trust myself.

Anyway, leaving the Zoo, I said turn right.  Adam started to turn right and I said, no, no, the Australian right.  So I meant left really.  If we went left we would be continuing North.  It sounded like a good idea at the time.  The first thing that happened was that we came to a fork in the road.  I said go left, but when Adam went to the left, I said, no, the other left (meaning right).  Adam turned around and now we were going South.  I was going to tell Adam just go back to the fork, but I was afraid to talk anymore.  A little while later (almost under my breath, because Adam was looking pretty angry still) I said, this is good.  I wasn't  sure that the place to get back on the highway going north wasn't past King's Beach--our actual destination.  So going all the way south back to the place that we left the highway was actually more logical.  Hey, I didn't pay all that money for law school for nothing--I can argue anything.

When we got back to the highway (which was a lot farther than I remembered going originally), almost right away there was a sign for King's beach but we passed it too fast for me to see what it said.  And the map on my ipad was showing again.  We were going to go over a bridge and then there would be a turn off right away.  Except that there wasn't.  The ipad map was completely unable to distinguish an overpass.  There were signs, but none of them said King's Beach.  My ipad map went back to a grey grid.  I told Adam to get off at the first exit and we'd just go in the direction of the Ocean.  (I think I was careful not to say left or right, east or west, because I totally no longer trusted my sense of direction). 

So Adam got off and we started trying to go toward where the ocean was.  I should say that Adam did that--I tried to keep my mouth shut, but I concurred with his turns at first.  Later we were just going and going through neighborhoods with no sign of the ocean anywhere.  I was getting very frustrated and Adam was getting very frustrated.  The map showed again on my ipad and I recognized a road.  It looked like if we turned around and went left on the next street, straight ahead would be King's beach.  Adam was sceptical (hell, so was I), but he turned around.  The place on the map that I wanted to turn had a little strip mall on the corner (I use the word corner very loosely, but I don't know how else to describe it--a bunch of roads just seemed to converge near it, not perpendicularly, not logical).  A store--let's stop for a diet coke I begged.  Adam was thrilled to get out of the car and away from me.  Ask for directions, I yelled at him as he rushed into the store.

Both of us calmed down and drank our sodas.  I think Adam had bought more time on his iphone at the little store, because he pulled it out to look at the map.  I also figured out that if I enlarged the map and then made it smaller, the grey grid sometimes disappeared on my ipad.  I got a pretty good shot of the map and showed it to Adam.  We both felt pretty good about the direction that we decided to take out of the parking lot although I was probably still gripping the dashboard because I felt like we were going to crash driving on the wrong side of the road.  My brain couldn't get over the fact that everyone else was too, so it was ok.

Anyway, we drove and drove.  The ipad went back to grey.  Suddenly, there was the ocean.  We parked by the side of the road and walked down a rather overgrown path into the sand.  The ocean was beautiful.  Adam went right out and waded in the water.  I was happy to stay up on the dry sand.  It was so pleasant, but I really wanted to sit down.  I knew that I couldn't just sit down on the ground (I lost those days 60 pounds ago), but I could see a some big rocks that I could sit on, up the beach.  Now all I had to do was walk through the sand to get there and sit down.  Walking in the sand is not easy.  The rocks looked really far away, but we weren't going anywhere, so I'd walk to the rocks and then walk back.  It sounded like a great plan--a great visit to the beach in winter in Australia.  So I put one foot in front of the other and sank into the sand and then repeated and sank and repeated and sank.  Every once in a while, my foot did not sink three feet and I started to develope a strategy of spreading out my toes in my shoe to distribute my weight so that I wouldn't sink as much in the sand, but it was all superstitious.  It was a very long walk.  As I got closer to the rocks, Adam had been way, way, way up the beach and was now coming back toward me.  He said, "I hope you don't think you are going to sit on that sand barge up there."  "What?  That's not a rock?"  "No," he said, "It's sand and it crumbles as soon as you sit on it.  I already tried." 

Why don't rental car places leave lawn chairs in the trunks of the rental cars?  I mean really, do they think we are going to try to take their lawn chair on the plane with us when we go home.  It would be such a small expense.  I'm serious.  We'd passed a K-mart when we were coming here--surely Adam could find his way back there to buy me a chair--then he would have another chair for his apartment.  In my brain at the time, it seemed like a brilliant idea.

Well I finally made it to the sand brine.  It was a nice little sand cliff as high as my butt.  There was no way that I was going another step without sitting down, so a sat down as gingerly as possible.  The sand did give way a little, but just enough of it held and was packed down by my large butt, so that I could actually sit down.  I was still a little afraid to breath such that I might cause an avalance, but I rested a bit.  Meanwhile Adam went up and down the beach which was pretty rocky.  There were flat rocks that had pools of water and they were covered in moss.  Adam started to slip a few times and the personal injury attorney drilled into my brain in law school, saw disaster around that corner.  Eventually Adam went down hard and I lost my seat by jumping up to see if he was ok.  He was fine.  When I got to him I saw that just a little further up the beach was a lovely little park with a bench to sit on.  Oh, that's for me.  Maybe they have a coke machine.  A girl can dream.

It was a bit of a climb to get to the park that was kind of on a bluff above the beach, but Adam dragged me up.  There was a very nice bench under a tree and Adam and I sat there a long time just soaking in the beautiful view.  What an awesome day (I said more than once).  There was a lighthouse on the map a bit further up the coast, so we decided that was where we should go to see the sunset (which was behind us, not over the ocean).  What time does the sun go down I asked Adam and he said, six o'clock or so.  We had plenty of time.  I tried to talk Adam into getting the car and driving back to this park to pick me up, but my phone didn't work and we were so lost getting here that neither one of us was buying that plan.  The idea of walking back in the sand was not sitting well with me, but I reasoned that at least I had my spread my toes in my shoe technique so that I wouldn't sink down in the sand so much.  Not.

We made it back to the car and my map was not grey.  It seemed like a straight shot up to the lighthouse and in a very short time we drove into a parking lot.  On the map it looked like there was a road to the lighthouse, but from the parking lot, it looked more like a bike trail.  We had plenty of time--it was only about 4:40.  The cake smelled really good in the car, but I said, let's have it with dinner.  We started to walk on the trail out toward the ocean--we were in some kind of a harbor.  It was so pretty, but there were a lot of dogs.  Between the old people, the dogs and the bikes--it was really kind of busy.  As soon as we started walking I realized the sun was looking like it was getting ready to set.  I thought, maybe because it is getting cloudy.  The sun behind the clouds near the horizon was looking really gorgeous, but the trail was a lot longer than we thought.  Soon it was clear that we were going to have to walk faster to beat the sunset to the lighthouse.  The sun was going down fast now.  [Much later I realized, duh, it is Winter in Australia.  Sunset was at 5:00 p.m.] 

We made it to the lighthouse (on a very steep hill), but I had the idea that we could go into the lighthouse and that would be the best place to view the sunset.  Adam went up the hill very fast, but then had to wait for slowpook McGee.  When we got to the top, the lighthouse was not open.  We looked out over the hill and back toward the harbor and took a few pictures.  It was an awesome sunset.

Then we made the long walk back to the car.  On the map, the trail was a circle back to the parking lot, but in reality, the trail turned into a service road for condo's and it was getting dark.  We were both pretty glad to see the car, except that it was a rental car and they all looked alike.  I think we had to try the key in a couple of cars before we found the right one.  [My other new best friend in Australia had a good laugh with us over that one--she said--it happens all the time.]

Now it was time for cake.  Even out of the back of the car, it was so very yummy.  Adam had packed a knife and forks, but he didn't sing (thank you).  Since it was my birthday, I wanted to go somewhere for steak for dinner.  I loved Outback in the States, but Adam said he'd never seen an Outback steak house in Australia.  They had Sizzlers (which were really much nicer than the States) and Lone Star Steakhouse.  I knew Lone Start Steakhouse, so that was a winner.  I think maybe we looked for directions on Adam's phone because we found one in Logan that was going to be on our way back.  Getting back on the highway was effortless and there were lots of signs for the City (meaning Brisbane).  It was a very long, long drive.  I was getting sleepy.  It was very dark.  There were no street lights on the highway.  There was lots of other traffic (but they were all driving in the wrong lanes, but then so were we--I closed my eyes).  Anyway, we got off the highway in Logan and just when we thought we were lost we saw the sign for Lone Star.  We parked and went in.  This is the restaurant that you eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor.  There were no shells on the floor, but we were asked if we wanted a bucket of peanuts as soon as we walked in the door.  Sure.

The placed looked awful rundown--like it was build in the 80's and never updated (or cleaned) again.  We were escorted to a back booth and the other customers all stared at us.   It was like we were in the twilight zone.  Anyway, the diet coke was not so good, they had no bread (they just ran out before we got there), they put margarine (or some Australian version on the theme) on the baked potato, but the steak was excellent.  I remember hating the place and the food, except for the steak.  I still remember how excellent the steak was.  Anyway, Adam and I were exhausted and we still had a drive ahead of us, so we didn't linger over dinner and we were back on the road.  Adam had driving to my hotel down to a science now, so he pulled up to drop me off.  I took the cake, a few more diet cokes, but I forgot the baggies and I forgot my sweatshirt.  I told Adam I'd meet him out front a 9:00 a.m.--tomorrow, museums--and I thanked him for the best birthday I'd ever had.  It really was an awesome, awesome day.

Stay tuned--Where's the best place to get the internet in Australia?  McDonalds of course.