The Outback

We have been to Australia so many times but have never been the actual Outback.  After a nice bloomin onion to start off the trip (kidding!) we flew to Darwin. We stayed at the waterfront for a couple night and enjoyed the wave pool and walking around town.  Then, the Ramseys came to join us in a super cool colonial house.  From the house we explored Litchfield National Park - the giant termite hills (the magnetic ones and regular ones) and a amazing waterfall that we were able to swim in (no crocodiles!). Pretty much every other body of water in the Northern Territory has crocodiles in it...but they said they checked that waterfall out and they hadn't seen any.  Still a bit scary! We also visited a crocodile park near Darwin - whoa - some crocodiles are HUGE. I had  no idea how big they got.

After 3 hot days in Darwin, we went to Kakadu National Park.  We did some hiking, visited some vistas and saw some amazing crazy old cave paintings.  They were something like 6,000 - 20,000 years old. Insane! We also did a crocodile river/wetlands cruise, but really only saw one crocodile - but it was huge. The tail was giant - though unfortunately we didn't get to see the full body. We stayed in a cabin in Kakadu, which was quite the experience. The cabin was kind of small, but we had fun making dinner, drinking and hanging out...and the pool was fun.

After Kakadu, we went to Katherine Gorge, staying in another cabin, but one that was huge and brand new. We did a river cruise in the Gorge, seeing amazing cliffs and rock formations and also more cave art - that were even older I believe. We went to this crazy "hot" springs that was kind of creepy.  It wasn't really hot since the air temperature was about 100 with 99% humidity and the water was maybe 90...I guess it would have been hot springs in some parts of the world. The crazy thing about the springs was that there were huge, really scary spiders all over.  Not super relaxing.

We loved spending the time with the Ramseys - mostly at night after the kids went to sleep and we had some drinks and laughed a lot. It is just awesome that this was the 3rd country along the way that we met them in.  More to come!

Photo fail. Dave was trying to get them to "hold up" the termite mound.

The craziest frog stuck on the convenience store window!  Ava loves to say that the frog is saying "I want chips, give me chips!"

Feeding fish in Darwin