Our second day in Tassie was dubbed “Cradle Mountain Day”. We thought we’d head west from Launceston and check out Cradle Mountain which is Tasmania’s 5th tallest mountain. We plugged Cradle Mountain into the inboard GPS and off we went. We drove along happily for an hour or so, saw a sign that said “Walls of Jerusalem” and decided to head that way to check these walls out. When we got to the car park, we discovered the “Walls” were a 3-4 hour hike from there. Oops! Guess we should have stopped at what we call the iStore (information centers plopped all over Australia) before we got so ambitious. At least the scenery was lovely – both times we saw it.
We decided there should be no more detours and got serious about getting to Cradle Mountain. The road wasn’t as cooperative, though. It was all zigs and zags, speed up and slow down, and go up and then down – basically quite unpleasant for the driver. Fortunately for us, we had a very good driver as long as you don’t have him say out loud what direction you’re turning. For some reason, Eric has a tendency to call a left turn a “right turn”. It has to do with a left turn being the “easy” turn here like the right turn is back home. All I know is it makes for some interesting car conversation as I try to figure out what turn he’s “really” talking about.
After stopping along the way for a roadside echidna, we finally arrived at the entrance to Cradle Mountain National Park and got on the shuttle bus to go into the park. We signed up for the short hike to Glacier Rock and off we went. Glacier Rock is huge and, amazingly, you can walk out on it. (Mom, don’t read the next sentence, please). It’s amazing because there are no guardrails and it’s a long ways down.
We knew the full circuit hike around Dove Lake was 2 hours so decided to continue on. It was all going well until we got past the halfway point. The second half was just chock full of up and down stairs. By the time we got done my knees were not the only joints unhappy with me. I vowed again to get into better shape and not hold Eric and A.J. up so much as they much prefer turbo-hikes. Now I just need to figure out how to do that without my knees knowing.
On the way back on the shuttle bus I found another one of the wild quarry I’ve been searching for – a wombat! No, two, no three wombats! Woohoo! Another critter I can cross off my list. We even saw another one of the “rocks with legs” a bit later; it must have been a wombat convention! It was definitely a happy albeit exhausted drive back to the hotel.
Next up is Tasmania’s east coast.
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