Breakdowns, Beanies and beautiful Bright
July 19, 2017
Before I properly begin I'm going to include a snippet
of what I wrote the very first night on the journey to our accommodation.
"Well I have to say it has been probably one of
the biggest adventures I've ever been on and definitely the first time I've had
to "woman up" and be a big girl. I think someday I'll look back on it
all and just laugh. It's definitely been a saga just for a little bit of snow!
But right now, it's all just the tiniest bit too raw for that..."
Talk about drama queen! It made me laugh even reading
back the next evening and, out of context you'd think we'd had some terribly
traumatic ordeal into the great unknown!
But maybe I should give myself some credit and fill
you in right back at the very beginning...
Based
on many factors, (one of our friends was causually lying in the Mediterranean
sun reading books and thoroughly enjoying being warm or maybe the fact we’d be “trying”
for the last threeish years) this year was going to be the year that we’d most definitely
make it to the snow!
The plan was simple enough, we'd drive up to the
alpine region, spend 3 nights in Bright, catching buses up to the snowfields
and then drive back home via one of the national parks that might get snowfall.
Nothing solidly planned except travel. Pretty straight forward right?
And by the afternoon I was certain that it would
be. We’d done many of the classic teen road-trip clichés; rocking out to the Proclaimers "500 miles", eating country pies and stopping in tiny towns wearing crazy hats
(just us? You’re all missing out)
But evidently this was not to be....
Yup,
a tow truck. Always a great start to a holiday.
The
poor car overheated once, and then again just out of Benalla, about an hour and
a half away from our final destination.
So, we left the car in Benalla with the nicest RACV bloke ever and sat down to have
some nuggets in the local McDonald's.
Now
our story could have ended there, and for the littlest moment I thought that it
would. Thankfully the family roadtripper is covered with RACV Total Care, which
I can now openly recommend if you're planning to drive decent distance on any
type of holiday.
After
a few calls, it was arranged that the car would be towed back home and we would
catch a taxi the rest of the journey.
I
have to say when the lady on the other end of my phone said taxi I was
sceptical. Do taxis even do journeys that are likely to take more than an hour?
Sure, you’ll cover up to a certain amount but how much does a journey like that
cost? (although by that point I was happy to pay whatever it ended up being extra) Could we carry/fit all the stuff we’d chucked in the back of the 4WD into a taxi? How would we get home? Why me??
But
our taxi arrived, we fit all our stuff in nicely (minus the toboggan) and off
we went.
It
was on this leg of the journey that I wrote the little snippet.
It
was also during this ride that I discovered that Bright has a regional bus stop
with at least three buses a day. Why I didn’t even look at this before I left
and suggest that be our method of travel!? I think since getting
my licence I’ve gotten too comfortable. The ability to drive everywhere has made
me overlook sometimes simpler, or in this case cheaper options of travel.
Where
was I?
$250
(thankfully all covered) later we made it!
Bucket
List Goal 1: Catch a $$$ taxi ✅
Day 1 concluded
with pizza, a premixed elderflower gin (my favourite!) and a slightly lost
wallet 🙈 (don't worry I got it straight back).
Considering
the fact that we were all a little fried, we spent the day exploring Bright,
booking buses and playing Pokémon.
I know these days it's greatly out of fashion, but I just can't let it go. Originally, I promised myself that I'd catch them all (or as many as realistically possible) and so I slowly but surely have been. And Bright is a Pokémon hub!!
Bright sits in
the Ovens Valley in northeast Victoria. It’s a beautiful town with historic
building, a bubbling river and gorgeous views of the surrounding mountains.
I love country towns. There’s a special
something that you could never find in a city. It’s that something that I really
love, especially in Bright. It’s such a wonderful and welcoming place to be.
It's always surprising how far you walk when you're having fun: we must have covered most of Bright twice over, what with locating the best pie shop in the world, a beautiful chocolate factory with the greatest brownies, and stopping by all the old-fashioned lolly shops.
Day 2 concluded in the Bright Brewery with some great cider (and free WiFi!)
All this story and I haven’t even got to the best bit!! SNOW!!!!!
Extensive research before our trip had lead us to a snow shuttle
bus up the mountain which I definitely recommend. We didn’t need to worry about
chains (which were needed the day we went up) or parking or getting lost
because all the mountain driving was taken care of for us. Sure, it was a reasonably
early start to get on the mountain at 8:30 but it left us the entire day to do
everything snow related!
Safe to say this was probably the most snow any of us had ever seen
and IT. WAS. BEAUTIFUL.
We did pretty much everything that one should do whilst at the snow. We learnt to ski, made an epic snowman (movie style), messed around throwing snowballs and trying to make snow angels and drank hot chocolates while watching the snow fall outside
It was probably up there as one of the greatest days ever! Well worth everything we'd been through to get there.
Day 3 ended at the Bright Hotel eating pub meals in front of a roaring fire.
And there you have it!
We spent our last day travelling back home having had a great little holiday. Dreaming of the next time we'd visit Bright and the snow (because I fully intend to be back there ASAP)
It's funny, whilst packing my stuff for this trip I discovered I had an enormous collection of beanies, enough for a different one every day with plenty of spares at home. So, as incentive to blog (because let's face it it's has been a very, very long time) I had planned to photograph an outfit and a new beanie every day. It's funny how things turn out. I was so busy organising things on the first day that I never took a photo of my adorable deer beanie or the last day's one (no excuse just forgot). And yet, when I got home I still had every intention of sharing my adventure because while it was a little stressful to begin (and I definitely did cry once or twice) I had an amazing time each and every day and I full intend to be back very soon.
So, thank you for reading (and coming back to my blog after all this time of silence).
xx
Caitlin
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