I'm Baaaack! What did you do?

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Well, I have been back from my annual family road trip a little over a week now, but I have finally caught up with things enough that I can start this discussion. I promised a few of you before I went away that I would share some of my travels in a discussion, so here it is. (sorry it is a bit long) We set off in the pouring rain on Christmas day around midday after unwrapping presents in the morning. We drove six hours to our first stopover. We visited an old friend of mine the next day which included a relaxing 3 hour drive to our next stopover. The day after, we drove another eight hours or so to our destination which was our camp site (see photo below) at Lake Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains. The town of Jindabyne is the winter sports capital of Australia. The town booms in winter as people come from all over the country to access the many ski resorts in the area. In summer it is still popular due to the large lake and also with mountain bikers and hikers, but it is a slower pace than in the busier winter time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jindabyne,_New_South_Wales We camped there by the lake for ten nights. The days were spent relaxing by the lake, kayaking, hiking mountains, exploring caves and riding our bikes. The highlight of the stay was probably climbing Mount Kosciuszko, which is the highest peak in Australia. This was a 13 kilometre round trip once we caught the chairlift up to the start of the trail from the base of Thredbo Ski Resort. We were lucky enough to have a big patch of snow to play in along the trail. Snow is pretty rare in Australia, but even rarer in the summer time, so we were in the only place in the country where you can do this. It was the first time that my children had ever seen snow, so we spent quite a while in that small patch, throwing snow balls and sliding about! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thredbo,_New_South_Wales We reluctantly left our beautiful camp site to start the return journey home. We only had a short 2 hour drive to Canberra the first day where we were spending the next 2 nights staying with friends at their home in Australia's capital city. http://www.visitcanberra.com.au/ From there we had a six hour drive to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. http://www.bluemts.com.au/ This area is extremely spectacular with large waterfalls, rock formations and high cliffs. We were staying opposite an attraction called Scenic World. http://www.scenicworld.com.au/ We spent most of our day there hiking, riding cable cars and the worlds steepest railway. Scenic World is right opposite the world famous rock formation called the Three Sisters. My daughter and I walked out to the first of these. That is as far as the path goes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_%28Australia%29 On our last night in the Blue Mountains, we watched TV for the first time in over two weeks. We also had started listening to the radio a couple of days earlier while driving. Up until then, we had no idea how bad the floods were in our home state of Queensland. We found out it was still raining there and we did not know if we would make it home due to the possibility of one or more of the numerous rivers. We started what turned out to be a 14 hour drive home in the rain. We had the choice of two highways to take and I chose one for no real reason but it was the right choice as it turned out that the other one was already cut off by flood waters in several places. It also turned out that we just made it through. If we had waited another day we would not have made it home for days as the highway that we went on was cut by flood waters and towns that we passed through evacuated less than 24 hours later! The rivers were extremely high as we passed over them and there was a lot of water close to the road. What followed then was the bad flooding in Brisbane just north of our home, but that is another discussion! So what did you get up to over the Christmas break?