FriendBurst Blog

I am a road trip junkie.  I proudly admit it.  For me there is no better way to take a vacation.  I don’t care what you put me in.  Car, truck or RV, as long as it can go down a highway, by-way, or scenic route, without any major problems, it’s all good.  On-road or off-road, I’m there.  Well, unless you want to go on a motorcycle.  This girl doesn’t do motorcycles.

I have driven, or have been driven, down at least one roadway in every state west of the Mississippi, Illinois and Florida.  In my home state of Nevada, I have traveled every highway and so many dirt roads that I lost count years ago.  I have explored the roadways of portions of Canada and Mexico.  So many miles traveled with so many memories that sometimes they tend to blend together.

Some trips took months to plan and others were taken on a whim.  Some were great, some were just good, but not even the worst one has ever swayed my love of the road trip.  Each one just makes me want for the next one.  And, the next one.  And, the next one.  One thing that’s guaranteed is that there’s always a road you haven’t been on.

Then there are the dream trips.  Places you want to drive through, but probably never will for one reason or another.  Sometimes it’s the money.  Sometimes it’s the logistics.  Sometimes it’s just the way life happens to play out at any given moment.  Sometimes, though, a road trip junkie can get lucky.

For years, decades even, the Man and I dreamed of taking a trip to Australia.  Whenever we saw a movie set in Australia, or read a travel article, or watched an animal show about kangaroos or koalas, we talked of going “someday”.  We made “dream plans”, those off-the-cuff conversations of things we would like to do, or see, if and when we got the chance.  We talked of spending some serious time to explore the things we had heard about, or read about, or seen on some screen.  We always knew that a trip to Australia, let alone a dream road trip, would probably be one of those “when you’ve got the time, you don’t have the money and when you’ve got the money, you don’t have the time” things, but we always dreamed of it anyway.

I don’t know exactly how it happened, or what may have caused it to happen, but the time-space continuum warped and bent in just the right way and we found ourselves with not only the time, but with proper trip budgeting, also the money, to take advantage of “someday”.  It wasn’t enough to do the dream trek through Australia as we had discussed for lo these many years, but it was enough to make a pretty good attempt at half of it.  Since nobody’s getting any younger and there’s usually no second chance, we decided an attempt at half the country would be better than never going at all.

We ordered maps, applied for visas, researched airlines, vehicle rental companies, and travel/medical insurance.  We calculated and recalculated mileages and time.  We calculated and recalculated budgets of our resources.  We checked calendars and historical weather records.  We read through Australia road laws.  We made packing lists and configured baggage layouts.  We worked an itinerary and started making bookings and reservations.  It took months of planning, but our great Australian road trip was to be a reality. 

The plan was that for 29 days it was the Man and I traveling over 11,000 kilometers (that’s like over 6,800 miles to us Americans) around the eastern half of Australia in a motorhome.  I kept a journal of our travels and am finally finding the desire to transcribe the pages.  I will be posting them to an online travel journal on another site and decided I should post them here to share with anyone that may be interested.  Even if you’re not interested, I’m posting them here anyway.  You never know when you might need a brief respite from the politics.