Travel blog

#australia #victoria #new-south-wales

Kookaburras on the electric wires at Narooma, New South Wales

Australia

March 2, 20158 min read2015

Dateline March 2, 2015, Melbourne to Sydney

We enjoyed our final breakfast at Robinsons with Stanley saying his goodbyes, packed the car, and Paul gave us directions to the M-1. His suggestion for the first night was Metung, a small fishing village where Paul's family had summered when he was a boy. From there it was Eden (with golf among the friendliest kangaroos we had met yet), then two nights in Narooma at Anchors Aweigh B&B with Heather and Kerry, where the train ran through the ceiling, the kookaburras on the wires had two chicks, and a crow at Narooma Golf Club stole John's yellow ball and flew with it out over the ocean. A picnic on the way at Bega Valley with prawns, leftover steak, and the last bottle of Lambert Estate sparkling. The Blow Hole at Kiama as we drove north. Then Pete behind the wheel for the run into Sydney, and the keys to our final room at The Russell Hotel on the Rocks. We returned the car to Avis and closed out 4,200 miles of driving between New Zealand and Australia.

#australia #south-australia #barossa-valley

Australia

February 13, 20157 min read2015

Dateline February 13, 2015, Lambert Estate, the Barossa Valley

From New Zealand to Australia. We left Queenstown on an evening flight, with an overnight at the Auckland airport, then on through Melbourne to Adelaide, landing about 11 a.m. We picked up the rental car and pointed it at the Barossa Valley to visit Jim and Pam Lambert at Lambert Estate. We had met Jim and Pam about eight years before through a small online wine company we ran with partners, specializing in boutique wines from around the world, and visiting their winery had been one of the highlights of our last Australia trip in 2009. A great change this time around was meeting their son Kirk and his new wife Vanessa, who is from Peru. The two met in the University of Adelaide's wine science program and are now the winemakers at Lambert Estate. Over two evenings at the property we worked through about thirteen bottles between the four of us and the Lamberts and their friends Kingsley and Kathy, including the flagship Silent Partner Cabernet Sauvignon and the Family Tree Shiraz, which once beat Penfolds Grange nine-to-ten in a Milwaukee blind tasting. We chased kangaroos through the vineyard, dined at the Wanera Wine Bar in Angaston, played pokies (Bunny cleaned up), and slept gratefully in the Lambert Estate Retreat. A wonderful welcome to Australia.

#new-zealand #hawkes-bay #millhills-lodge

January 29, 20154 min read2015

Dateline January 29, 2015, Millhills Lodge, Hawke's Bay

After the round at Kinloch, we drove on to Hawke's Bay for a two-night stay at Millhills Lodge. TomTom led us to a small plot of land with several cows looking at us. A call to Sam Jackman told us we were two hundred yards from the actual turn-in. We were greeted by Penny and Sam and their dog Kip, given a tour of the cabins, pointed at the nearest liquor store (the vodka and rum supplies on the trip were running thin), and welcomed in for two of the most enjoyable days of the trip. The lodge sits on several acres surrounded by Penny's family farms, sheep on one side and cattle on the other. Dinner the first night at a place called Diva. The second night, Penny cooked for us at the lodge, a three-course dinner that closed with a Pavlova, and we spent the evening with Penny and Sam over Hawke's Bay wines. Between the two evenings was a day at Cape Kidnappers, where Bunny made her first hole-in-one. Eggs Benedict on the last morning. Hawke's Bay was wonderful.

Bunny Warenski with the Callaway ball from her hole-in-one on the third hole at Cape Kidnappers

#new-zealand #cape-kidnappers #hole-in-one

January 30, 20151 min read2015

Dateline January 30, 2015, Ace Bunny Warenski, Hole in One!

Extra, extra, read all about it. Bunny made her first hole-in-one on the third hole at Cape Kidnappers. Some backstory. The day before, on the practice range at Wairakei, Bunny had set her clubs down on the grass. When she picked them up, there was duck poop on her clubs, her arm, and a little on her shirt. We all told her: bird poop is good luck. We had no idea how right we would turn out to be. The next day, on the third hole at Cape Kidnappers, with a Callaway ball that had a 3 stamped on it, on the 30th day of the month, on the third day in a row of New Zealand golf, Bunny put it in the cup. Cape Kidnappers later sent us a photo of the plaque with her name engraved on it. Bunny's was the second hole-in-one of the year on that course. The first one belonged to a PGA pro.

#new-zealand #taupo #rotorua

January 27, 20154 min read2015

Dateline January 27, 2015, Taupo and the Ambleside B&B

Out of Auckland and south to Taupo, with a stop at Rotorua along the way for the geysers and the mud cauldrons and the rest of New Zealand's small-Yellowstone thermal show. We arrived at the Ambleside B&B in Taupo and were met by our hosts, Pat and Russell Jensen, who poured us tea and wine and sat with us for an hour while we got to know them. They had raised two sons on a deer and sheep farm near Hawke's Bay and sold the farm twenty years ago to build this place. Russell's story of getting out of the venison business after Chernobyl, the Norway lamb paradox, the hawks that pick off the lambs at birthing time. Dinner at a lakeside restaurant down the hill at sunset. The next day we played Wairakei and came back to the hot tub — heated by the geothermal water that runs under the property, so hot it takes a hose of cold water to cool it down to soak in. Pat did our laundry for a nominal fee. Two nights here. Off to Huka Falls and then on to Kinloch and the Jack Nicklaus course.

The view from the porch at Panorama Heights, looking out across the bay to downtown Auckland and the Harbour Bridge

#new-zealand #panorama-heights #waitakere-range

January 26, 20154 min read2015

Dateline January 26, 2015, Panorama Heights, Western Auckland

About an hour from Gulf Harbour, up into the Waitakere Range in West Auckland, to Panorama Heights, our bed and breakfast for the night. Our hosts Allison and Paul had been running the place for sixteen years and had it set up beautifully. The B&B was the upper of two houses on the property, perched high on a steep hillside, with a porch looking straight out across the bay to downtown Auckland and the Harbour Bridge. The sun went down, the city lights came up, and we stood out there for a while. A country breakfast in the morning that we ate with Allison and Paul at the table, along with a short history of the Waitakere preserve below and the kauri trees that once covered it. Then came the small mystery: did we know what a panel beater was? We did not. With some hints, we figured out it was the Kiwi term for an auto body repair person. Then Paul took us outside to show us his cars, a brand-new red Jaguar F-Type and a fully restored 1967 E-Type, both done by the resident panel beater himself.

#new-zealand #bay-of-islands #kerikeri

January 24, 20153 min read2015

Dateline January 24, 2015, Bay of Islands, Swallow Ridge

Out of Auckland early Saturday morning, heading north for our first New Zealand golf round at Kauri Cliffs. The hostess at the Whangarei information center sent us out on the first "Loop" to Tutukaka, two hours of cliffside driving that returned us to within ten kilometers of where we had started. We did it again on the second Loop. By the time we reached Russell it was too late to look around, so we caught the short ferry across to Kerikeri and our B&B at Swallow Ridge, where Mike and Chris welcomed us in. Mike and Chris had moved from London seven years before and built the place themselves in 2009. The bedroom slider opened directly to the Bay of Islands. Sunrise was something. After Kauri Cliffs the next day, Mike booked us into a local restaurant, and we came back to Swallow Ridge for one of the better nights' sleep of the whole trip.

#new-zealand #kauri-cliffs #kauri-cliffs-golf-club

January 26, 20153 min read2015

Dateline January 26, 2015, Golf at Kauri Cliffs

A thirty-five-minute drive from Kerikeri took us off the main road and onto a mile of dirt road that had us wondering if TomTom had us lost. Then the gate appeared. Cameron, the assistant golf pro, met us in the drive, loaded our carts, and pointed us out to the course. Seventy-five degrees and sunny, a soft breeze, and only six other players on the course for the whole day. The course was designed by David Harman of Orlando, Florida, who died of lung cancer at fifty-one not long after completing this design. The owner is Julian Robertson, the Tiger Management founder, who fell in love with New Zealand as a young man on a writing year and later built both Kauri Cliffs and Cape Kidnappers on cliffs above the Pacific. The front nine plays over fantastic vistas out to the Bay of Islands. On the back, John birdied ten, birdied eleven, and parred twelve before reality returned on thirteen. Janice shot eighty-three from the men's tees at six thousand-plus yards. Pete and Bunny had a blast. Back to Swallow Ridge for rum and Cokes by the pool and a quiet dinner.

#australia #sydney #sydney-opera-house

The Sydney Opera House from the harbor, on the ferry out to Watson Bay

Australia

January 21, 20154 min read2015

Dateline January 21, 2015, Sydney — The Adventure Begins at Doyle's

In 2010 we had spent a couple of weeks in Australia, primarily to play the great Sandbelt courses around Melbourne, and we ended that trip with a few wonderful days with Jim and Pam Lambert at the Lambert Estate in the Barossa Valley. We had been looking for an excuse to go back ever since. This trip is the excuse. New Zealand and Australia with our friends Pete and Bunny Warenski, who were with us on the Alaska Walkabout and on the Robert Trent Jones Trail in Alabama. We arrived in Sydney Tuesday morning after twenty-four hours of flight time, met up with Pete and Bunny at the hotel, walked the city, and tried to stay awake until evening to outwit the jet lag. The next morning we took the ferry across the harbor (past the Opera House and under the Harbor Bridge) out to Watson Bay and Doyle's, the seafood restaurant we had visited on our last trip to Sydney and had been looking forward to introducing the Warenskis to. Tomorrow we fly to New Zealand.

A par 3 at Torrey Pines South Course, the green sitting on a cliff above the Pacific

#california #long-beach #queen-mary

July 30, 20135 min read2013

Dateline July 30, 2013, Long Beach to Torrey Pines, Closing the Trip

Out of Simi Valley after the Reagan Library, down the 405 (the freeway only one person in modern history has ever been able to drive fast on, and even he was crawling). Long Beach for a city park overnight near the Queen Mary, then a Mercedes brake job that ate the whole next day. Huntington Beach, with the campsites taken by the US Open Surfing crowds, so a Marriott Courtyard instead. Janice's practice round at Sea Cliff Country Club for the USGA Senior Women's Amateur qualifier, with John caddying. A Safeway chicken eaten next to the rig in the hotel parking lot. Breakfast with Gigi Kimball at Ruby's on the pier. Monday over to Yorba Linda for the Nixon Library. Tuesday Janice's qualifier, a four-putt on the par-three 17th that pushed her into a six-way playoff, and a brutally tough second-year-in-a-row playoff loss. Then Ann and Ruth in Oceanside (who turn out to live in a beach house on the Pacific). And finally Torrey Pines, the South Course, the closing round of more than 1,600 miles down the California coast. Then east toward Arizona, with Lelia and Betty Lou waiting for us.

Sunset over Camp Wilson, Will and Cathy's place on Whidbey Island, Washington

#washington #spokane #seattle

July 17, 20138 min read2013

Dateline July 17, 2013, Washington to the Redwood Forest

Out of Coeur d'Alene, twenty miles through the rest of Idaho, then on to Spokane, where both of John's parents grew up before meeting in Seattle at the University of Washington. The Ginkgo Petrified Forest at Vantage, a stop John remembered from family drives between Seattle and Spokane as a boy. A Columbia River campsite, Snoqualmie Pass where John learned to ski in first grade, across Lake Washington into Seattle for Pike Place Market and chowder at Lowell's. The Mukilteo ferry to Whidbey Island and three days with John's brother Will and his wife Cathy: salmon, mussels, the family deer, and Janice doing the actual RV repair herself with Will helping. Then ferry to Port Townsend, Hurricane Ridge above Port Angeles for a few snowballs in July, down the Olympic Peninsula and Highway 101, across the Columbia to Astoria. Down the Oregon coast in rain, Bandon Dunes too cold to play, and on to Crescent City and the start of the Redwoods.

The Rio Grande crossing at El Paso, Texas, on the drive west

#mississippi #biloxi #beau-rivage-casino

May 15, 20134 min read2013

Dateline May 15, 2013, On the Road Again, Janice Traveling in the RV

John became a realtor over the winter, and his first deal landed the week we were supposed to leave for the Roadtrek Corporate Rally in Branson, Missouri. He stayed home to work it. I went west on my own and added a stop that was not exactly on the way: my oldest friend Marty and her husband Jeff, in Cottonwood, Arizona. Marty and I have known each other since high school. From Flagler Beach to Biloxi (with a small detour through the Beau Rivage Casino), an overnight at a Walmart, San Antonio, Las Cruces with a fuel scare in a ghost town, a tethered surveillance blimp out in the desert, and the long beautiful drive through Tonto National Forest and Roosevelt Lake. Written by Janice.

Bob Bittner at the DJ console of WJTO, his Bath, Maine AM radio station

#maine #bath-maine #bob-bittner

July 25, 20123 min read2012

Dateline July 25, 2012, Bath, Maine, and the Radio Guy

Out of Acadia and south down the Maine coast to Bath, to visit Bob Bittner, who has known Janice since grade school. They had not seen each other since high school, until Facebook reconnected them. Bob and his wife Raisa, an architect who redesigned their place themselves, live on a stretch of water acreage with a great room and a view from the back porch. Bob has been in the radio business for twenty years and owns two AM stations playing adult standards from the 1930s through the 1960s, drawing from a library of more than 5,400 records. We toured the studio (78s, 33s, and 45s for the youngsters), and the garage, where Bob's lifetime license-plate collection runs into the thousands. And then we waved goodbye, and headed home, the long summer through four Canadian provinces and a slice of Maine quietly closing behind us.