Lord Howe Island 2021

  This morning started like most others – fairly slow, led by the kids.   Our first adventure was to visit ^*^*ThE vAlLeY oF sHaDoWs^*^*^ We rode our bikes there, and had to clean our shoes before embarking through a thick palm tree forest.   We walked steadily upwards for a few hundred meters before popping out in a beautiful vista at a single grave of some kid who disappeared while snorkelling about 6 years ago.   Soon after this we came to a fork in the road, one way went to Middle Beach, the other to The Valley of Shadows and “The clear place”.   We followed the path to the latter, again through more thick forest until we came to another fork in the road; the Valley of Shadows and the Clear Place.   We decided to split up as this seemed the smartest thing to do when walking to a place called the Valley of Shadows; Dad and Tom went to the Clear Place to check it out and report back, and the rest of us went to the Valley of Shadows.   The Valley ...

Woke up early (7:30am) today to get back to the dinner BBQ spot we were at on Saturday night - it was such a good location we knew it would probably be in high demand.  Bacon, eggs, tomato, onion, etc breakfast BBQ was planned there, and fortunately we were the first there so grabbed the spot.  I spent most of the morning doused in smoke if not trying to get the damn thing alight (lots of wet kindling - it rained the night before), then cooking all the food.  It was yummy though, and then we spent the next hour or two on the little beach adjacent.  I thought I would just stay in the shade and didn't bother with sunscreen.. another fail on this front. We had a polite tour group operator wanting our spot for lunch, and as lunch time approached he became more persistent, so we decided to head back for nap time.  The pre-lunch nap didn't really work for Rory, after about 30 mins she wandered out claiming her nap was finished.  We fed her a peanut butter roll a...

This morning I got a sleep in which was great, got out of bed just before 9am, and we went to straight to Ned's beach for a swim.  Upon arrival we noted that the ocean was quite rough, and so we thought we would try the lagoon.  It was a good call - the lagoon was calmer, but it was pretty windy.  We grabbed an umbrella, set it up almost parallel to the ground, and proceeded to entertain the kids.  Tom and I swam out to a floating platform in the lagoon, the kids demanded to be taken out there next time.  Should be interesting. After packing up we went home for a pre-lunch nap which had to be quick as our next activity was soon.  While the nap was happening we were at the local table, I had my laptop with me and was writing up the previous day's journal, my phone safely on the table.  Suddenly the phone fell off the table.. it must have just inched it's way off over about 10 minutes.  The back corner cracked :( Once lunch was finished we went back...