SWAA: Denmark, Albany, and the Road to Hyden

After a great night in our A-Frame cottage at The Cove, we woke up bright and early to pouring rain.  We had originally organized a ride to the start of a nice hike with the cottage owners, but decided to cancel due to the rain.  That meant we suddenly had the whole morning free!  By this point in our trip we were pretty exhausted, so we decided to relax all morning.  I went through pictures and tried to identify the birds we had seen so far, we played board games, and had a nice warm fire. 

Denmark also has a lot of little gourmet food and wine shops, so we decided to have a nice vineyard platter for lunch.  Vineyards take our traditional cheese/meat/bread picnic lunches and kick it up a notch to make it extra delicious.  It was so delicious that we ended up getting a case of wine shipped home from the Singlefile Winery!  It just arrived here a few days ago so I'm looking forward to opening some when Ryan gets home.  After that we sampled more cheese, fudge, and toffee, and managed to get some pasta sauce and cheese for our dinner. 

The main attraction in Denmark, though, is its unique coastline.  We went to a place called Greens Poole for a short walk down the beach, and despite the patchy weather it was really beautiful.

 Just a little bit down the beach was the other main coastal attraction, Elephant Rock.  The way the path led us, we had to wait for the waves to go out and then time it just right and run through these narrow rocks before the waves came back in again.  Not sure why the path led that way, but it was pretty fun!  There was a different path leading out though, so we only had to do it once.

Typical Ryan

That night we just packed it in early in anticipation for a long next day.  We left as early as we could on the 27th and did the short drive east to Albany for a quick look around and some brief whale watching.  If we hadn't had so much fun in Denmark we probably would have booked a whale watching tour, but unfortunately we only had enough time for some quick stops at popular lookouts where whale sightings are common.  We didn't see any whales, but we saw a pretty cool black cockatoo (watch for it in my next bird blog).  I'm sure Albany would have been nice, but it was a bigger town and I don't regret spending the time in Denmark instead.

Our final destination for the day was Hyden, but we had a lot of road to cover before we got there.  If you look back at the original map you can see how far it was (basically a quarter of all of our driving).  Luckily it was through some beautiful and new scenery, so we had lots to look at.  First we passed through the majestic but brief Stirling Ranges National Park.  I say brief because what you see in the pictures was basically all of the mountains.  Having seen the endless Rocky Mountains in western Canada it was kind of surprising.  There were also tons of fields of yellow flowers, which made it particularly special.

This was definitely the most remote road we had been on yet, passing only a few cars an hour, so it was kind of random when we came across this tourist attraction:

The final interesting thing we passed on our long drive was a pink lake.  It wasn't "the" Pink Lake (about 400km south east of where we were), but I've heard of a few pink lakes in Australia.  The lake turns pink at certain times of the year due to a change in the algae in the water, so it was a great surprise to pass one of these on our trip.  Unfortunately it was also very hard to photograph the colour, but here's Ryan's best shot without editing.

Only one more instalment of our South Western Australia Adventure to go.  Stay tuned!

SWAA: Mini-Putt, Lots of Trees, and The Cove

After an allergy-filled sleep at the Karri Valley Resort we had a buffet breakfast in a nice dining room overlooking the lake.  It was your typical breakfast but Ryan discovered these  delicious croissants that were so warm and squishy that we stole one for lunch (which of course would again be a picnic on the side of the road, so we also stole butter, an apple, and peanut butter).  I spotted a banana from across the room and made a beeline for it because they're so expensive here (down from $18/kg to $12/kg!), but turns out it was plastic.  Yet another disappointment at that hotel. 

Sorry, enough about the food.  Before we left we decided to play a quick round of mini-putt at the resort.  As a side note, no one calls it mini-putt here and they're thoroughly confused when I call it that.  I can't remember what they do call it though…  ANYWAYS without going into to too many details, Ryan kicked my butt but we were both very over par.  There was one hole that was a par 3 and I got it in two shots (picture victory dance) but then Ryan got a hole in one! (picture him not gloating and me pouting...and maybe hitting my club on things and stomping around like a child) 

When we were picking up our clubs from the "fun shack" or whatever it was called, there was randomly a tiny black lamb wandering around and being all cute following people.  As if that wasn't funny enough, when we went to return our clubs there was an 18 month old Western Grey kangaroo in a harness (without the leash) hopping around the shop!  Only in Australia can you have a kangaroo for a pet, but I still can't explain the lamb.

After our morning of fun we decided to head to Beedelup Falls, which supposedly had a suspension bridge over top of it.  We knew it was close to the resort, but when we showed up we could actually see the hotel from the lookout.  Turns out the falls were feeding into the lake we were staying on...oops.  Serves us right for being too lazy to do the short walk to the falls that the resort advertised!  Actually, it was kind of lame in the end.  The falls were really small but the suspension bridge was sort of fun.  They have random radio stations that you can tune into for a narration of the park you're in, and we should have listened when the guy said "some people from other countries can't believe we find these falls so exciting because they're used to much bigger falls…"  Seriously, it was like 3m high.

  

Now on to more exciting things, like the Giant Tingle Tree!  We went on a nice quiet walk through a tingle tree forest in Walpole-Nornalup National Park (which randomly had lots of info boards about dinosaurs) and saw these absolutely massive trees.  They're interesting because all of their important growing mechanisms are located in the outer layer of the tree, so when there's a forest fire they burn through the middle first and end up hollow but can still keep on living.

Moving right along, our last stop for the day was the Tree Top Walk.  Basically this was equivalent to climbing a giant tree, but it was wheelchair accessible.   This walk was very well done and absolutely beautiful, so Ryan and I took our time and decided to bird watch.  It was really cool because the walk took you up a slow incline, allowing you to see the trees and birds at all of the different levels.  At the top there was a long pathway 40m above the ground which was also really neat, and arguably much better than the 75m tree I climbed.  It was certainly more relaxing!

Throughout the day we had patchy cell reception, so we were a bit frustrated trying to find a place to stay that night.  We ended up calling this place in Denmark called The Cove that sounded nice in the tourist pamphlet we had.  They had one cabin left, which the owner explained on the phone was usually reserved for groups.  He suggested that we look at it before we committed but was willing to give us the single room rate.  Thinking he just meant it was for families, we were not phased at all and decided to stay there.  Upon arrival, however, we were warned again that maybe we should look at it.  The drive in was so beautiful and it was located in a very secluded forest, so stubbornly we again declined to look at it first.  Then the owner brought us to this:

Yes, that was the "A-Frame" we were staying in.  All by ourselves.  And the inside looked like this:

(pause for effect)

Yes, the table seated 25 and if you look carefully you can see some cots lined up on the right of the picture.  There were 19 beds in the cabin.  What  you can't see are the amazing sky lights all above the table, and how massive that fireplace is.  It was absolutely beautiful (and built by the owner and his family), so needless to say we stayed two nights instead of one!  We pulled two couches up to the fire, grabbed some blankets, and drank wine and played Ghost Stories (my favourite board game) all night.  And by all night I mean until like 9:30 when I passed out.  From being tired.  Not from the wine.