Fri. Field Trip pt. 1 Blue Mountains

We've all been talking about this weekend for some time and it definitely lived up to all of our expectations. This was the order of the field trip on Friday. ZOO, Blue Montains and then Opera. I've decided I'll explain the Blue Mts. in this post only and will report on the other two soon. At 8am we were all bundled up as we hopped aboard our big bus that would take us 2 hours away to the zoo and then the Blue Mountains. I can't tell you much of how the ride went, because about 20 minutes in, most of us fell asleep. Howeverrrr, before we fell asleep we had a choice of movies to pick from and I can't even remember what the other ones were, but a few of us went crazy when Summer Heights High was an option. This is one clip of "Jonah" who also
plays a female student named Ja'me and Mr. G. The above clip is of Jonah and this next one is of Ja'mie. watch it if you have a minute.

When we woke up in the blue mountains it was a cute town that reminded me a little bit of Big Bear Mountain. We parked and walked out onto the lookout called Echo Point, where you could really start to take in just how huge the whole area was. In this picture it is Amanda on the left and Cossette on the right. Amanda is here playing rugby, which is really big down here, and she got to meet like the "John Madden" for Rugby and went out to a bar with him and some of the players after a game. Cossette, if you remember from my first post is here golfing.

As you can see from the picture, we're dressed pretty warm with jackets, mittens, beanies and what not. We were cold at first, but once we got hiking it started to heat up.

As we walked along the lookout you could see the Eucalyptus trees stretching pretty far with a bit of a blue haze over them. We're told this is because the type of oils on top of the leaves and the amount of sunlight that reflects off of them. I also learned Koalas eat only a certain type of Eucalyptus leaf which you're not suppose to because it kind of messes with you're head...maybe that's why Koalas sleep 20 hours a day.

We walked around up top for about 10 minutes and took pictures with a bunch of people and a group one that is on my facebook. If you look up the Blue Mountains, the main attraction you could say is the Three Sisters. They aren't real people, but three thin and pointy mountains right next to each other layered top to bottom with all types of rock and sediments throughout the millions of years. The picture to the right is of Desiree, myself and Adelle standing in front of them.

We were told that the 1,000 step trek to the bottom would take about and hour which sounded kind of long if you really think about. We found out quickly it wasn't the number of steps, but the kind of steps we were taking on. In the picture to the left, you're seeing when we had it easy. We had a metal staircase with sterdy, evenly placed steps with a flat surface. However, 90% of the walk down were very short and steep steps carved out of rock and worn into dips because of the amount of feet having treked up and down them before us.

The steps were starting to make my legs shake from having to slow-mo walk down them and with them being so steep. We reached another lookout a bit lower in the pic to the right, but still very cool where we snapped a few photos.

Once we were near the bottom we started walking on metal stairs again. Our trail was not only a dirt trail, but covered in snowball sized rocks everywhere with dips and turns.

Besides the Eucalyptus trees, the area was covered with ferns and red trunked trees that were as hard as rock. I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if some dinosaur just popped out of nowhere because I felt like we were in a Jurassic Park movie.

When we were about 20 mins. into the walk I tripped (typical) on a rock and that trip caused me to trip again and look like I just snapped my ankle because my hands even touched the ground in front of me keeping me from face planting. The people behind me thought I sprained it and one of the teachers offered to take me back up. The thing is, my ankles are so flexible I didn't feel a thing, but nobody seemed to believe me because of how bad it looked.

waterfall

We walked for sometime and we all seemed to enjoy every minute of it. Nobody complained, it wasn't too cold, nobody got hurt, though a few close calls, and we would stop to take photos on rocks, climbing trees and along the winding trail.

The picture to the left is of a tree holding up a huge rock over us. As we continued along we saw only a couple other hikers, no animals and thankfully had no lectures mid-walk. We were however told that one of the oldest living trees in the whole world (millions of years old) is found in this park, but only a few rangers and scientists know its exact location.

Near the end of the walk we started to hear some water and eventually found a pretty waterfall that a bridge took us over. The picture up and to the right is the waterfall starting at the top right. Once passed the waterfall we found the path we'd take back up the mountain...THE STEEPEST RAILWAY IN THE WORLD>>>CHECK OUT THIS LINK. I screamed my head off the whole time because we weren't given seat belts and I totally thought this was going to be a slow scenic tour and you couldn't see how steep the railway was from the ground. If you look on facebook im desperately holding onto the fencing inside the ride. To the right is us going in between the mountains on this fast ride and it eventually completely closed around us for what seemed like forever and I kept yelling, "Where is the light at the end of the tunnel?!?!" because it was sooo dark. The reason why it was so scary is because it used to be used for mining.

Thanks for reading this post and I'll be sure to report on the ZOO, Opera House, Harry Potter on the Biggest IMAX screen and how we're going to play Rugby in the park tomorrow and then go to a professional game!

CHEERS,

Love,

ME