Mosi'ing Around the World

We've been home a little over three weeks now and I think about Australia and our trip all the time. It's been a wonderful whirlwind of emotion... regrouping and finding home back in our actual home. It's an amazing feeling to see everyone you love after such a long time... well at least a long time in my mind :) It's really the small moments from the trip I think about the most. How I felt in a place in a  specific moment in time. Walking to Cathedral Cove in the dark for the sunrise, sitting in the sand and watching the sunset at Wharariki beach, eating the acai bowl in Currumbin... I'm worried I'll forget the little details and that places will blur together. Anyway, I figured I couldn't end the blog posts for this trip without some numbers and summaries of how the trip went :) Here's our path through Australia, we really hit a lot of the East Coast and I have no regrets of the path we followed. So grateful for our time here. I definitely still ...

Well, here we are... sitting in the Lihue airport about to get on our flight home. I won't say the adventures are over, Raleigh is still full of adventures and new things to discover :) But, I can't believe this particular adventure is over. Five months is a long time to be gone, but like I said it just becomes your way of life... traveling. I can see why some people do it non-stop. However, I'm ready to rest my head on my own pillow. After 35 different beds, I'm ready for my own!

Larry and Tina met us in Queenstown, and we began a whirlwind two weeks together! We are so happy they were able to join us, and right off the bat they were ready for anything... even after 30+ hours of travel time. We immediately felt taken care of, they went on a hike with us, made us dinner, and even made us breakfast the next day. Parents are just the best, aren't they? After two months since Chris left, it really was an amazing feeling to see family again. Can't wait to see all of you reading this NEXT WEEK... CRAZY!!!!

We arrived in Tekapo! My main reason for coming to Tekapo was to go on the Earth & Sky observatory tour. Tekapo is part of the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve which regulates light pollution at night (among other things I'm sure) in order to have perfect star gazing conditions. We've heard on a clear night it isn't a white spots on a dark sky, but dark spots on a white sky because the stars are so bright.