{"id":22388,"date":"2011-03-11T04:10:01","date_gmt":"2011-03-11T09:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/22388\/great-australia-road-trip-page\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T16:44:52","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T16:44:52","slug":"great-australia-road-trip-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/22388\/great-australia-road-trip-page\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Australia Road Trip \u2013 Page Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Days 1, 2 & 3 – Thursday, Friday & Saturday – September 16, 17, & 18<\/p>\n

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Weather:\u00a0 Good for flying (I hope)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Destination:\u00a0 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Total Miles Traveled:\u00a0 7,761 as the birds fly<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Price of Fuel:\u00a0 What is the cost of jet fuel?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Route Taken:\u00a0 Las Vegas to Los Angeles to Sydney<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Highlights:\u00a0 The flight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles was scheduled to leave at 6:45 p.m., but because we arrived to the airport, not hell-bent at the last minute, but on time with a little to spare, the airline decided to run a bit behind schedule.\u00a0 Geez, I hate flying, but how else do you get there?\u00a0 A slow boat through China, maybe?\u00a0 I don\u2019t really care as long as we can make our flight from Los Angeles to Sydney at 9:45 p.m.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to waste anytime stuck in L.A., especially at the airport.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Flying to Los Angeles took all of 40 minutes.\u00a0 Just enough time to get us up in the air, put a drink in us, and set us down in L.A.\u00a0 We made it with less than 20 minutes to hightail it from the domestic terminal to the international terminal, check in, get through security, and make it to our boarding gate.\u00a0 I must have set off some alarm somewhere in the dark recesses of the airport screening room when they put me through the super x-ray machine at LA International, because I was pulled out of the line for an upper body pat down by a TSA officer.\u00a0 I asked the girl if they did this for all the passengers or if I was just special.\u00a0 She replied with a polite \u201cno\u201d and said she does what they tell her from the backroom.\u00a0 You just can\u2019t have any fun with those guys.\u00a0 Then when I went to pick up my stuff off the conveyor belt, they grabbed my travel vest to double check it.\u00a0 Turned out my e-cigs charging pack gave them some concern until I told them what it was.\u00a0 I guess I\u2019m a marked woman.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The plane was huge and it was fully booked.\u00a0 It seemed to take forever to get everybody on board.\u00a0 We, of course, were in the last row, middle section.\u00a0 The seats weren\u2019t that much different from any other plane I\u2019ve traveled on (which really haven\u2019t been that many).\u00a0 A tiny bit wider with a tiny bit more leg room, but it was far from enough.\u00a0 The flight attendants were very doting, the food was really good, and everything was included in the ticket fare.\u00a0 All in all, Qantas was almost everything they say they are.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It was a very long and uneventful plane ride.\u00a0 A very, very long plane ride.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t help that it was night time and I actually think that made the ride seem even longer.\u00a0 Every seat had an awesome entertainment console with movies, satellite radio, some television, outside flight camera, real time flight tracking, and video games.\u00a0 I watched The Last Airbender and Ghost Writer, which I thought were both fairly good movies.\u00a0 I tried to sleep after dinner, but all I could do was snooze off and on.\u00a0 In between snoozes, I tried to play a few video games, but I just couldn’t get into it.\u00a0 Too excited I suppose.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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When we finally landed it was Saturday in Australia, the sun was up and I was dog tired, but the adrenalin rush from the excitement was keeping me going.\u00a0 My butt has never been so sore or cramped in all my life.\u00a0 Walking through the airport made my blood start circulating freely again and everything in my arms and legs felt all prickly.\u00a0 Gratefully, that didn\u2019t last long.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We went through Customs & Immigration without any problem.\u00a0 The immigration officer wanted to know where we were staying while in country and when we told him we rented a motorhome, he asked where we were going.\u00a0 We told him, he looked at us in astonishment, and told us we would not be able to make the drive in the 29 days as we have planned.\u00a0 He asked if we realized how big Australia is and how far it is between places.\u00a0 We said that we did, but I don\u2019t think he believed us.\u00a0 We figure if we can make it over halfway across the United States in less than 4 days, we could make it around half of Australia in 29.\u00a0 I know he’s betting we won’t by the smug smile he gave us.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

All of our bags arrived with us thereby checking the biggest worry off our list.\u00a0 We made it out to the taxi stand and were amazed to see a line to get a taxi that was just like the ride lines at Disneyland.\u00a0 Another 20 minutes of waiting, the line creeping along every so often, and we were on our way to the Cheapa Campa rental office.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Stops:\u00a0 Since we were flying over an ocean, it’s a good thing we didn’t have any stops along the way.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Where We Stayed:\u00a0 In our seats, except to stretch and walk through the cabin every few hours.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Where We Ate:\u00a0 Again, in our seats.\u00a0 For dinner our choice was Mahi Mahi.\u00a0 The evening snack was popcorn, a fruit bar, peppermint candy and water.\u00a0 Breakfast was a bowl of Raisin Bran, with yogurt and melon on the side.\u00a0 I could have had the frittata, like the Man did, but since I had no clue what exactly that was, I thought I’d play it safe with the Raisin Bran.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Days 1, 2 & 3 – Thursday, Friday & Saturday – September 16, 17, & 18 Weather:\u00a0 Good for flying (I hope) Destination:\u00a0 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Total Miles Traveled:\u00a0 7,761 as the birds fly Price of Fuel:\u00a0 What is the cost of jet fuel? Route Taken:\u00a0 Las Vegas to Los Angeles to Sydney […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2,25],"tags":[651,2466,2465,2431],"class_list":["post-22388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-other","category-world","tag-australia","tag-getting-there","tag-plane","tag-road-trip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116511,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22388\/revisions\/116511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}