Krista Grothoff

We stopped in Sale for a rather greasy, filling breakfast, and drove down toward Lakes Entrance. It was a rainy drive through farms and such for most of the way, but the landscape was pretty. At this point, Christian decided we should head up toward mountains for possible skiing action. I wasn't sure what we were up for, and the road on the map didn't look pleasant, but we headed toward Gelantipy where we knew there was a youth hostel.

We stopped in Buchan on the way to Gelantipy to stretch our legs, and Christian used Das Toy to collect some really interesting bird sounds. It was wonderfully green. The road so far had been very hilly and curvy, and I was a bit unnerved from it. (In case you can't tell, I didn't much like the driving bits of the trip!) In spite of not enjoying being behind the wheel, the scenery was green and hilly and really lovely.

The hostel at Gelantipy (pictured in the next set) was located on a working farm where a lot of backpackers stop and work before moving on to the next place. There was a warm fire, a cozy room, and a very big, tasty meal waiting for us there. The people who run the place were very accomodating. Of course, Judy, one of the people who runs the farm/hostel, was amazed and perplexed that it had taken me 3 hours to do a drive which took her 1, but she was nice anyway. She told us that the road to where Christian thought we should try skiing was indeed an unsealed, windy road, and I refused point-blank to drive it; a nervous-wreck driver is not a good driver, and I could foresee really freaking out on snowy, windy roads.

(To get an idea of how loopy and stressed from driving I already was, Christian got a great deal of amusement from seeing me walk into the men's room at the cabin, and not even noticing I was in the wrong bathroom until it was... er... too late. Even then, I didn't notice until he told me!)

In any event, we decided we'd try to go skiing someplace closer to Melbourne. Christian didn't want an unhappy driver, and we feared the whole drive would take us too long anyway; we had to be back in a couple of days for the conference, and it was already taking me a really long time to drive anywhere on these... um... interesting roads.

It was raining really hard as we headed over to dinner. Christian made impressive ascents up the climbing wall while we waited for dinner (outdoing everyone else who tried it!), and we all settled down for a huge 4-course meal. It was tasty, warm, and very filling, but we were so tired we couldn't even stay through dessert (I think we may have offended the hostess, but it was unintentional!!!), and we both crashed immediately upon getting back to the cabin we were assigned to.

These (click here) are the pictures from the trip to Gelantipy.

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