Weekend Adventuring

I just returned last night from a very busy (in the outdoors-y sort of way) and lovely weekend away with my dad and siblings where we visited Pemberton, Margaret River, Bussleton and Mandurah (hee, that's a lot of places over only three days) and saw a lot of cows. It was incredibly fun and exciting to try all sorts of new things I've never done before, like canoeing and fishing. I even got to try rowing a rowboat by myself. Well, with my seven year old sister hanging onto the left oar and trying to help but really sending us around in crooked loops and eventually running aground. Although that last part was my fault, I'm almost certain. That dude from The Notebook made it look so much easier.

So I don't launch into an extended commentary on how beautiful the scenery, butterflies and adorably soft joeys sniffing around the place were; here are just some of the greater highlights of the weekend:

-My dad canoeing out on the lake by himself for almost an hour. We thought he was having the time of his life, really in the moment. Although when he sort of staggered up ashore, finally, it turned out that he had been stuck and having a rage of frustration out there the whole time. Kudos for powers of observation! Dad, next time don't wave like you're enjoying yourself.

-The advertisement for Hungry Jacks right above the cow field. The morbidity of it didn't occur until until my witty bro pointed it out. I laughed and felt like a terrible slayer of animals. Conflicting.

-American guy who was a staff member at Karri Valley resort had the most intriguing shoes I have ever seen. Sort of flat, yellow and grey in colour, like soft rubbery climbing or athletic shoes but - get this - they had these individual toe pockets. Like toe-socks but shoes. Toe shoes. I regret not asking him where he got them from.

-My brother and sister butt-printing the walls of the dry sauna we were hanging out in. What is butt-printing, you ask? I imagine it could mean any number of things from learning to print your ABCs à la butt to swallowing whole sheets of paper and using your butt as a printing press. Although in this context, it simply refers to pressing your wet (from the swimming pool) butt cheeks up against the wooden walls of the sauna and leaving charming, well-rounded memoirs for everyone to see, waiting for them to evaporate and repeating the process. No wonder we didn't have company.

[One day I will learn how to manipulate blogging technology to make beautiful and fascinating bullet points that will make my readers stare at them for a really long time. Then they won't notice how much grammars I don't have.]

Here are pictures of the places we spent the night at that I swindled off Google images:

Karri Valley Resort (Pemberton)

They have these gorgeous wooden chalets there.

Upsides: Absolutely beautiful landscape, our neighbour feeding lots of Rainbow Lorikeets on her balcony.

Downsides: No oven in our kitchen, kookaburras mocking you as you reel in your unsuccessful fishing line

Abbey Beach Resort (Bussleton)

A little bit fancy.

Upsides: Close to the beach, feels like you're staying in a luxury mansion, access to swimming pools, a sauna, sports thingos (like squash, basketball, gym and tennis), playgrounds and art exhibition within the resort, fascinating kitchen cabinet with 360 degree spin rotation: hours of entertainment.

Downsides: Lousy dishcloth made the water turn purple and proved near useless in scrubbing burnt spaghetti from a saucepan, renting movies from the Lobby is ridiculously expensive and they didn't have The Amazing Spiderman disc even though it was on their display rack of available movies. Sister deprived of reunion with hotsy biffle, Andrew Garfield.

Both places were comfortable and incredibly lovely, in different ways. It was a really fantastic weekend and even though I'm very tired and sporting mosquito bites in questionable places, I feel extremely chuffed and lucky to have had the opportunity to go away to such great places and try such exciting activities. 

I hope you had a great weekend, too!