Due to the ever changing weather in SEQ QLD, we decided to take a last minute mini camping vacation up north to Noosa Heads where we hadn’t been before. It was both the perfect and worst day for it.
Continue readingDue to the ever changing weather in SEQ QLD, we decided to take a last minute mini camping vacation up north to Noosa Heads where we hadn’t been before. It was both the perfect and worst day for it.
Continue readingA few weekends ago, on 2nd November, Mikael turned 30! In the spring, when it’s warm and light outside. That is so strange! My own normal spring birthday will now be in the fall. Land of upside-downs.
He was welcomed into his 30’s with two night’s spent in Byron Bay and some rain, but all in all by a very cosy weekend down south.
After the most incredible visit to Coombabah, we packed our car and drove down to another timezone. It is so weird that you right now travel one hour into the past, just across the border to New South Wales just south of Gold Coast.
The weekend was all about camping and just soaking in the Byronshire atmosphere with mother in law while celebrating Mikael’s 30 years on this planet as well as our first year as engaged.
His birthday started at The Farm in Byron Bay. Super busy even if it was raining a lot! Really good breakfast and cute place with animals.
We then drove up to the lighthouse and were so lucky the weather was not optimal, there were pretty much no people and we managed to get a parking spot. As with the whale season being over, there were no whales. But the views were still incredible! Up there, we took a fika break and Elise and I had a very funny encounter with a magpie friend. He was walking on the rail, right next to where we were sitting, Elise was filming it and it was cheeky enough to keep walking and then hide behind a pole, just for it to pop its head out around it as she just stopped filming. It was hilarious! 
This time, the most eastern point of Australia was accessible and we have now stood on one of four corners of this continent.
This poor guy had the biggest tick I have ever seen right under his eye. Also, these water dragons are everywhere now when it’s getting warmer outside.
Birthday dinner!
This weekend was the premiere for me in the premier division of the Queensland Beach Volleyball Tour and I got the honors of playing it with Rose.
According to Google Maps, Elliott Heads (Bundaberg) is 5,5h away from Gold Coast. Google Maps lies here in Australia. You kinda always have to add 20% to the trip, even if it should take traffic into consideration. On Friday arvo, we left at 4:30pm and didn’t arrive until 11:30pm. We were driving up with Karissa and Anna and had a really great car ride up. It is hard to drive in the dark though. It gets so dark here! And the roads are narrow, and speed limits are high, oncoming traffic has strong lights compared to the pitch-blackness all around. Mikael and I switched several times though.
Karissa and Anna were staying at the camping ground and Mikael and I were staying in the backyard of a small cottage behind the camping grounds. Very close to the beach and it was so quiet over there.
We popped the tent up and went straight to sleep after trying to figure out how to get into the house and use the bathroom.
It rained during the night and it was windy, so the straps from the tent hit the tent walls all night which made it hard to sleep, but I still felt rejuvenated when I woke up at 6am. It was still cloudy and we weren’t expecting much of the venue after the organiser, Vball in Paradise the day before had posted that nature had had its toll on the nature reserve where the courts were gonna be put up. But once we got there, we were surprised to find that he really did a great set up! 9 courts out of 10 planned, the sand was definitely rocky and had lots of shells still left in it, but so much had been raked to the sides.
Rose and I played really well together. We did some mistakes, but we always went all in for the points. My defense game was on point and the wind was on our side in every game. We lost our first game in the pool, but still got really good scores. The second game we won, so we ended up 2nd in our pool. Here in Premier division, you don’t go straight to quarter finals unless you win the pool. So the 2nd and 3rd meet in playoffs and the winner goes to QF. As 2nd in our pool, we thought we would be in advantage, but we got a team in the playoffs that should have won their pool, but instead lost. We thought we would win as well, but we didn’t. So that sucked. But that meant that we could leave early on Sunday.
Anna and Karissa made it to the final, but got a ride from their opponents in that game, so Mikael and I could drive home early. Still took 7h, even if Maps said 5.
On Saturday night, we all went to Elliott Heads Bowls Club, which was the place to be in this tiny town on a Saturday night. We had dinner, didn’t stay too long. People voted for Mikael to start playing and there was a limbo competition. 
On Sunday morning, we went to the beach a quickie and saw whales pretty close to shore. Soon, they will be gone again. What is the point of looking out over the water then?! 
It was so great driving in the light so we could actually se the environment around us. That made us unfortunately see things we didn’t want to see. We saw a dead roo, echidna and snake. So sad…
Great weekend, long drives, but fun to see something else than Brisbane, Gold Coast and Byron Bay,
This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.
I have finally done it, I have hiked the tallest peak in SLO and it wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it would be. And I wanted it to be special because I am not sure I am gonna do this hike again. So for this special occasion I woke up at 5 am with Kelsey and her three friends from Iowa. 30 min later we were on our way to the bottom of Bishop’s Peak and the hike started soon before 6am. It was pitch dark, but no clouds so all the stars were out and it was so pretty. But it was not enough to light up the trail so we all walked with our phone lamps on. I have to admit that it was a little bit scary not seeing anything except a little bit ahead of our feet, but we didn’t hear any snarls from mountain lions. A relief. The first part was the worst part, it was just uphill on a trail. My calves did not like that. The rest was zig-zagging up the mountain side and wasn’t bad at all. We took a wrong turn once but realized after two minutes that it was wrong and was on the right path the rest of the way. It was not very warm but perfect hiking weather, we didn’t get super sweaty or tired.
We got to the top early after hiking for almost an hour. It was only 1.2 miles to the top which was not too bad actually, a pretty lagom hike. But we were early, and that meant that we had to sit up there for half an hour before the sun came up over the hills. It was windy like crazy and very cold. And we were also 34 people up there at that unearthly hour watching the sunrise with us.
It was amazing, so beautiful! I had kinda hoped for clouds so we would be over them, but this was beautiful too. You could see all of SLO and all the hills and tons of birds of prey sailing with the winds. It was a wow-experience. I might do it again for a sunset hike, but I will prioritize the other hikes first.
The way down was scary. Ever since my fall down the Potato Chip Rock in San Diego I am scared like an old lady going downhill. But we all survived and after the hike was done we bought breakfast at Slodoco. Yummy! I watched half of the pilot episode of iZombie on The CW and then took a two-hour nap before my hair appointment. iZombie seems like a fun TV show that I will start following now too. So many of the shows I watch right now are on The CW, a good TV channel, simply. It is about a girl who becomes a zombie, but she can control herself and tries to hide it from everyone, including her very attractive fiancé with whom she broke up when she became undead.
At 12.30 I rode my bike all the way to the train station and a little more to the hair salon I had an appointment at, Salon Glo. Rakesha took care of me today and she did an amazing job! It took 2.5 hours and now the worst of my split ends are gone, and my growth is pretty much invisible and looking more natural and beachy now. I love it! I can totally recommend her. And the prize was very nice too. $135 for all of that, and I even got a nice scalp massage and hair mask and tips on how to keep my hair in better shape. After schampooing my hair, I will towel dry it, then put in conditioner in the bottom half of my hair, rinse, and then be done. If there is water in between the conditioner and hair, it doesn’t work. It makes sense, and I will do this from now on so my hair can start getting healthier. Because now, half my hair is with split ends, but I wanna keep the length, so this will help. She was also very friendly. I am happy and feel like a new person.
I rode my bike back and was so tired the last 10 minutes when I reached the south entrance to campus. My butt and thighs hurt. It was no fun, so I chilled for a bit at home, took a shower, and then went with everyone downtown to Farmers Market. It was very nice, we got dinner and I bought some Olallieberry jam. I have never heard of it before, but apparently a ollallieberry is a mix between a blackberry and raspberry. It was good one and now I can mix it up with my normal strawberry I have at home for my pancakes in the morning. Which I am gonna stop with next quarter since I’ve told myself to be more healthy. Whatever.
I stayed at home after that. I was planning on going downtown again with Julianne for some partying, but wasn’t in the mood, and of course not in the mood for line dancing either. So I stayed at home, packed and prepared for tomorrow’s roadtrip up to San Francisco. I am excited!
The girls came home early from line dancing, a couple of them being so very drunk. I don’t handle drunk people very well when I am sober, but I feel sorry for Kelsey who has to drive them down to LA and take care of them on her own when she leaves here at 2:30am. I wish her last night here could have ended better than being kicked out of a line dancing event.
I had a great time with her here this week. I have been a little bit of a party pooper, but I have my reasons for that. It’s been a rough quarter and I am just starting to drop everything and start over with my last quarter in ten days. Today, my first day of spring break was great, it couldn’t have been better (except maybe for the late night’s events); a sunrise hike (which is so unlike me since I hate mornings), a new haircut, and a very pleasant Farmer’s Market. I have a good feeling about this first and last spring break of mine!
Pitch-dark start of the hike.
SLO in the dark.
It is not a very big city.
The birds were floating everywhere.
A 360 degree photo from the top of the tallest peak in SLO.
It looked like nothing.
It’s not a huge difference, but the growth is gone, it’s more even and looks so much more healthy. I love it!
Bemm 