Into the blue

Last weekend Jenny and I went on a weekend trip to the Blue Mountains with a few fun-loving Canadians. It was a great time--even though we had to walk down literally a thousand steps in the process.

Probably the most notable part of the Blue Mountains is a rock formation known as the Three Sisters. Apparently, there's legend that three sisters were accidentally turned to stone by their witch doctor father who was trying to protect them from a monster. However, the father lost the magic bone that changed them to stone in the first place, so he couldn't reverse the curse. I'm glad my dad was never into that stuff...or at least isn't anymore.

We spent the day walking all through the mountains. We began by decending under the Three Sisters, which was extremely painful because we unknowingly had to walk down a thousand very uneven, steep and rocky steps to get there. Once we got past the steps, the hike was quite pleasant. In all, we walked for a little over three hours. Of course, there was no way in hell we were walking up a thousand steps back, so we hopped on a cable car to take us back up the mountain.

The next day, we drove about an hour out of our way into the middle of nowhere to check out the Jenolan Caves. The caves, which are made of limestone, are said to be some of the oldest in the world. I, having toured some caves in southern Missouri during a high school trip, can honestly say they were about as cool as caves could be. The tour even featured a pretty impressive light and music show. According to the tour guide, the caves had light bulbs in them long before most of the homes in the area did. Oh so Australian.