last of the spaceship

here are some of the last pictures from the van ride adventures! We returned the van in Brisbane on the 9th of October. Overall, there we a lot of beaches, spiders, mosquito bites, fuzzy radios stations, noisemachine cds, mush dinners, and not a lot of showers. we went through two tents, two vans, 4 giant bags of oatmeal, countless cans of beans, a few bottles of wine, two australian states and covered 1,145 miles (or should we say 1,842 km).
The Danish girls were an absolute riot, we had so many laughs and learned all the words we shouldn't in Danish.. They have continued their trip down the Australian coast and surprisingly to Keli and I and our families we decided to come home!!
We flew out of Brisbane and did the 14hour flight to Vancouver where we went our separate ways to Portland and Seattle and gave our families a shock.
Although this adventure is done we've been planning more.. check in for the canada to mexico bike ride next summer ;)

this is life right now

Cairns and North into the Daintree Rainforest... lots of untoched beaches.. lots of van time.. lots of trees and bugs and saltwater..

UPDATE!

So Keli and I have been on opposite sides of Australia for the past three weeks.. We decided to meet back up in Cairns to do some genuine Australian things.. We have been here about a week now and have swam in the Great Barrier reef, seen some parrots and kangaroos, and Keli is currently in the process of getting her dive certificate. It has been abnormally rainy and windy since we've arrived, but it's given us time to plan our next month.. We met a couple Dutch girl at our hostel and we all decided to rent a van and drive south along the coast together! This adventure will start on the 10th! More to come...
Below are pictures of Green island... a super tiny island on the fringe of the reef where we all got really sunburned, snorkeled on the Great Barrier Reef, spotted sharks and turtles, and finally swam in the salt water.

the great ocean road

there is a road south of Melbourne home to some of the best surf spots and beautiful beaches in Australia. The bus ride was a bit touristy, but well worth it.

winter in australia...

So, it's actually winter in Australia right now. A bit colder than expected..

It's still awesome though! Meeting sweet people and staying with our childhood friends! (Kenzie and Jill) kinda weird that both of our best friends from back in the day are in Australia right now.

We will be heading up to Northern Australia soon so catch some sun and swim this really big reef ......

sorry its been so long!

How about a quick catch-up..
NORWAY
was unbelievable.. beautiful landscape. We stayed with a good friend, Line, who was an awesome host. Line showed us all around her town of Stavanger, a great place right on the coast. We traveled to her cabins and went hiking and water skiing and layed in the sun. Definitely lucked out on the weather, its usually raining in Norway, but we landed on the best week they'd had all year.. nice and sunny!!

(the view from Line's family cabin)
(we had to take underwater tunnels to get there)

(Keli water skiing like a pro at the cabin)

(views from our roadtrippin)

(hiking to the crazy rock!)

Norway was great but we had to get out of there!! it was crazy expensive haha.
So we headed back to Germany and did a random flight out of Berlin that landed us in Austria once again! Vienna this time, we had a great time roaming the city.. Saw some sweet art and met some fun people in the hostel.
After Vienna we decided to up and leave to AUSTRALIA!!!!!
We flew out of Berlin so we got to see the Berlin wall and see the city a bit before we left.
So now we are in Australia!!!!

there was no photoshop manipulation of these photographs

I repeat. NO MANIPULATION.
So we met up with Johanna again and had a few days with her in Austria and Germany. We went out of Salzburg into the Alps and stayed at her families cabin for a night.. We went up to this big dam built around a huge alpine lake.. surrounded by glaciers, meadows and huge rocks.

The lakes were a super light blue and reflected the mountain perfectly. It was so great to get out of the city and up into some fresh mountain air!