Neither Here Nor There

*Picture overload- you’ve been warned…

Our weekend trip to Heron Island to celebrate David’s 30^th can truly be summed up in one word: paradise. It was so beautiful- almost surreal! It is truly one of those places that really does look exactly like a postcard. The water really is that amazing clear blue/green/turquoise color. The fish really are as colorful as you’d imagine. The sand really is that gorgeous creamy white. Multiple times while I was there, I caught myself just looking around and thinking, “wow- this is just so beautiful” – almost overwhelmingly so. The crazy thing is that the most amazing part of it is actually what is under the water- what is IN the actual Great Barrier Reef.

On Friday morning, we took the Heron Islander boat that leaves daily from. I was a little nervous, because I had heard that the waters can be pretty rough, and sea-sickness inducing. We lucked out though and it was a smooth ride the entire two hours.

I immediately started snapping photos as soon as we got to the pier. This shot is one of my absolute favorites and is now the background on both my laptop and phone. I have done nothing to edit this photo.

View from our room

After we got settled in our room and ate lunch, we were anxious to head right to the beach to go on a guided reef walk. A reef walk is basically like tide pooling. The tide there goes out SUPER far at low tide, and you can walk for what seems like forever and have the water barely at your knees. During low tide, you can see so many amazing plants and animals in the shallow waters. It was nice to have a guide too, because she pointed out things I would have gone right past. We saw sea stars, sea cucumbers, crabs, clams, and tons of pretty coral- among other things.

Our guide.

I think this was called a Sea Hare Slug

Hermit Crab, Sea Star, Clam!

David's angry face because I forgot to wear my sunhat. Ha!

See how far out I am from the beach and the water is still super shallow?!

The next day, we spent almost entirely in the water. You can snorkel from pretty much anywhere on the island, so it’s easy to do on your own. It is unbelievable just how much life there is in the Great Barrier Reef – it really did feel like it was a completely new world (Little Mermaid, anyone?) underwater. I kept choking on water as I would frequently gasp or squeal in excitement through my snorkel when I saw something cool. The highlights were: stingrays, a reef shark, amazingly colorful fish, huge clams, a manta ray, and of course tons and tons of coral. At one point, we happened to swim right into the middle of a giant school of fish- it was crazy!

Hubby scoping out the perfect beach spot

Pretty fish!

Stingrays- we saw about 10 of these!

Manta Ray

Reef Shark (supposedly totally harmless, but I was still a little freaked out)

There is an old shipwreck right off the shore that you could swim out to at high tide. We ventured out there, and it was really fun to explore- except we stayed out there a bit too long, and almost got stuck out there as the tide was coming in.

The island itself is pretty small, and you can walk around the entire island on the beaches (during low tide, of course) in about an hour. We spent part of our afternoon doing this, too.

Excuse the squinty face- it was SUPER bright and glare-y this day!

David and I both realized that this was the first beach-type resort or vacation we had been to/on where people were not lounging on the beach or by the pool most of the time. There seriously is just so much to do and see there that even though lying on the beach is one of my favorite things to do, you’d be a fool to spend much of your time doing that. The resort itself is the only resort on the island, and it is pretty bare bones and minimalistic. This is partly because the island is National Park and because again, it’s really not meant to be a “sit on your lounge chair with an umbrella in your drink” kind of place. I actually loved that about it.

On Saturday night, we had signed up to do a “Star-gazing” session. I was a little iffy on this, but I’m so so glad we did this. It was so neat! My mind was officially blown to see a totally different sky full of stars than I was used to seeing in the Northern Hemisphere. I mean, it makes sense that it would be completely different, but I had just never thought about it, I guess. It was strange not to see the North Star or the Big Dipper. But it was also interesting to have the staff point out new constellations I had never seen. They had a big telescope too, and we were even able to see Jupiter and 3 of its moons! There were quite a few shooting stars as well. Between the crazy amount of life in the water and the amazing sky full of stars, it makes our little everyday world that we’re used to seem pretty insignificant. Not in a bad way- just made me a little reflective about it all I guess.

On the morning of our last day, we went on a guided snorkeling trip. We took a boat out just about 15 minutes from the island, but that was as far as you needed to go to get past the big “drop off” into the deep part of the ocean. We saw a lot of the same things on this trip, just MORE of everything. Two new things that we saw though were a Crown of Thorns Starfish- our guide told us that these are very rare to see, and somewhat a bad thing to see because these guys eat the coral at a very quick rate. And on this snorkel trip, we FINALLY saw what I had been hoping to see the whole trip: SEA TURTLES! These guys were so big and SO SO cute! I wanted to get closer to them, but we were told not to approach them since it is their nesting season and that might scare them away from coming to shore. Boo. Unfortunately, because the water was deeper here and because it was slightly overcast that morning my photos from this snorkel adventure didn’t turn out as clear as the ones from the day before.

Manta Ray

Sea turtles (above and below)!

Overall, Heron Island was amazing! I still have a hard time believing that I was actually in the Great Barrier Reef and that I saw all of the things in the photos. I definitely think we will go back again, and I absolutely will insist that anyone who comes to visit us also make a trip to Heron Island.

And some more photos I just couldn’t bear to “cut” from the post…

Although I completely understand why, I have to admit that I was still a bit thrown off that Thanksgiving wasn’t celebrated here in Australia. How U.S.-centric of me, right? But I mean really, why Aussie’s wouldn’t celebrate this American holiday is just beyond me. But so are a lot of things here. Anyway, needless to say, the actual DAY of Thanksgiving was quite underwhelming- no day off, no Macy’s day parade, no turkey, etc.

The day after Thanksgiving here- which was actually Thanksgiving day in the U.S. (welcome to my life of adding/subtracting hours and working out being a day ahead of everyone), was a little more exciting since I got to video chat with lots of my friends and family during their Thanksgiving festivities. I love run-on sentences. And fragments. Lauren, can you correct that for me? Or maybe you better not. My parents and brother spent Thanksgiving outside of Philadelphia with some of my mom’s extended family. It was so fun to talk to everyone and see everyone thanks to FaceTime. But I won’t deny that it made me pretty sad at the same time. On this day 14,000 miles seemed EXTRA far away. I promptly called my sister in Washington to commiserate that neither of us were there. I also got to talk to my grandma and my dad’s extended family back in Phoenix. I love you FaceTime and Google Video Chat!

To distract myself from being a little homesick, I got started on my long list of items that needed preparation for the Friendsgiving dinner David and I were hosting on Sunday. This was my first time hosting Thanksgiving (or any type of gathering with a meal really), and man it was seriously a lot of work! Add to that some difficulty in finding typical Thanksgiving dish ingredients and the world’s smallest oven, and I was definitely a little more than stressed about the whole thing. Here are some of the dishes I made in progress:

Pioneer Woman Dinner Rolls - Definitely underestimated the amount the dough would rise!

Cinnamon Toasted Almonds, Pie Crusts, Stuffing, Gravy

My favorite apple pie! (Forgot to get a picture after it baked)

I was most nervous about the turkey. It just seemed like such a daunting task. I regretted not helping or at least watching my mom prep the turkey all those years. I tend to get a bit squeamish with raw meat, so I always just avoided that part. Well anyway, with a little (ok a lot) of help from my mom, my sister, my friend Anne who is an amazing cook, YouTube, and a few other websites, I am happy to report that my turkey turned out great! I actually made two turkeys, since the largest turkey I could find was 10 pounds- and we were having 15 people over. I made one the night before and the other the day of. So glad I did it that way!