I ranted about our trip on facebook already, so here's just a ton of pics and some commentary. By way of quick summary, we went there, took a wildly steep mining car down over 1000 ft into the valley, hiked around, took a cable tram back up, took another cable tram across the valley floor over stunning waterfalls and a rock formation called the three sisters, and then hiked 2 hours through eucalyptus forests and waterfalls underneath flocks of sulphur crested cockatoos.... I can't describe how cool that was, other than to apologize about how long it will take to load this page, and point out that I exercised restraint in the number that I actually shared here.
This is the view from our Hotel room, you can see the Blue Mountains and the Jamison Valley underneath. Absolutely stunning
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This is, oddly, the train heading down to the valley |
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It's under construction ;) |
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Down in the Jamison Valley!! |
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Hiking around, waterfalls! |
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Minecraft players, be jealous!! |
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Cutey ;) |
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Varieties of eucalypts everywhere! |
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No idea what kind of tree this is |
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Mountain Ash, which is a kind of eucalyptus |
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This is a termite nest!! |
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The first cable tram |
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The second one, glass bottomed! |
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And then we walked down there, for two hours, simply stunning, and nobody complained!! |
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He has a turban, and coincidentally got in the way of my panorama ;) |
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The top of the Katoomba falls |
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While we were waiting on Toni and Milo to catchup |
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We climbed up on top, of course... |
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oh, yes, he got wet.... |
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Yikes, yes, that's a bit dark, but there was no way to fix that... this is midway down the Katoomba falls, and was a crazy hike, but totally worth it. |
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Sulphur crested cockatoo... |
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At the Furber stairs. |
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The three sisters! and their little brother David. |
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Steep! I yelled Milo's name 957 times on this part, as he kept jumping off the rock face towards the guard rail |
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Cool walk under a massive overhand |
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Here's where the path got a bit branchy/sticky |
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Today's view |
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Yesterday's view |
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At the aboriginal center, we put our handprints here after watching a presentation and interactive discussion |
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And, yes, of course, we bought boomerangs :D |