I needed a little distraction last weekend. Tony was out of
town and my sister was having her first wedding shower. I was sad to miss the shower, so I needed
something to keep me occupied. Boy, did I find it!
Several people have remarked to me at how wonderful Tamborine
Mountain is and that I should visit the Rainforest Skywalk there. My decision was made: Rainforest Skywalk,
here we come! We were all loaded in the
car, only to realize that the GPS would not locate the Skywalk. I was determined and did not let this minor
hiccup get me down. I located the
skywalk on my phone, mapped it out, and tossed the phone to Ellis, my
navigator. We were on our way! We approached our exit and our first
round-about. No problem. We get to the next round-about and it wasn’t
quite that easy. For those of you that have seen European Vacation, I may have
chimed in with the quote I happen to say quite a lot when I am driving, “Look,
Kids, there’s Big Ben. Oh, look kids, there’s Big Ben.” Yes, we circled the round-about before
finding our correct exiting point. Ellis
read out the next direction. I kept
driving, and driving, and driving. It
finally dawned on me that I might should stop and look at the map. After reviewing, I realized that it would
have been a good idea to explain to my navigator that the blue line on the map
is our route and the blue dot represents our car. The blue dot should ALWAYS be on the blue
line. Perhaps just tossing the phone to
my eight year old wasn’t the wisest decision on my part. Yes, our blue dot
needed to find it’s way back to the blue line.
The rest of the way, I was a broken record, “Is the blue dot still on
the blue line?” A bit further down the
road, we reached the trek to take us up the mountain. Just as I was hasty in throwing the phone to
Ellis, I started to realize my entire decision to drive somewhere that included
the word “mountain” was a bit hasty and a little insane. Driving on the opposite side of the road, on
the opposite side of the car, UP a mountain is a little bit intimidating and
nauseating. I should apologize to the line of cars that had to follow me on
that stretch of road! After many curves, we approached the sign, “Rainforest
Skywalk” (cue the choir singing). I
whipped the car in…okay “whipped” may be a little exaggerated. I slowly pulled
the car in and parked. As I peeled my white knuckles of off the 10 and 2 on the
steering wheel, Hannah Grace threw herself out of the car yelling, “I need
air!”
The drive there was enough adventure for me. We were there, though, so off we went to
purchase our tickets. As we rounded the
corner, I got a good view of what I was about to step on. That brings me to hasty decision #3. I am not sure why I thought it was a good
idea to visit something called SKYWALK when I am terribly afraid of
heights. Three steps on to the grated,
steel walkway and Ellis is jumping for joy, Hannah Grace is saying, “we are
going to die” and I can hardly keep it together. I inform Ellis to WALK slowly and I tell
Hannah Grace, “Just don’t look down.” Of course she did. Ellis charged on down
the walkway, while Hannah Grace and I held onto the rail, walking as briskly as
we could. Meanwhile, we are passing
heaps of people taking in the beautiful scenery. I’ll have to take their word
for it. We weren’t at a total loss,
though. The trail ended on solid ground
alongside a rolling creek. So, our
lovely nature walk that should have taken an hour, lasted about 30 minutes.
Lucky for us, the GPS recognized how to take us home. Just so you know, it wasn’t even close to the
way we went to the mountain. Oh well, it
was an adventure. Next time, though,
maybe I’ll put a little more thought into it.
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It took all I had to let go of the rail to capture this picture!
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Hannah Grace and I liked the solid ground much better!
Feel free to visit www.rainforestskywalk.com.au to see more scenic pictures.
