Oof, the blog posts are few and far between lately. We’re going to try to remedy that on our upcoming drive around Australia over the next 2+ months.  Also, we’ll try to post to Instagram more on that trip, so if you aren’t following us, you should ( @handelblog )

Here’s what we’ve been up to since our last post:

Maleny: We’d been meaning to explore the Sunshine coast “hinterland” for a while and we had heard great things about a small town called Maleny, so we decided to spend a weekend up there exploring. We booked a cute little stand-alone cabin in that backed up to a creek that was also close to town.  We had dinner and drinks at the local brewery the first night and at the local pub on the second night. In between all that we went on a few bushwalks in Kondalilla National park (Kondalilla Falls and Baroon Lookout) and generally explored the town.

Mom: Sadly, my mom passed away unexpectedly in July. Sara and I made a last minute trip to California, my brother came down from Tahoe and my cousin flew out from Minneapolis. Together we managed to take care of everything that needed to be done. One of my mom’s friends from the senior community she lived in helped us organize a small memorial service and many of her friends from the community and my mom’s cousin, Eileen, contributed to it. We went with Jeff back up to Tahoe to bring stuff we kept and were able to enjoy a nice hike to the lake.

Sydney: Sara managed to get off the work project in Brisbane that she wasn’t enjoying, but unfortunately got staffed on a series of projects based in Canberra and Sydney and had to do a lot of travel and spend a good deal of time down in Sydney. Since I mostly work from home, I was able to join her a few times and we explored a bit more of Sydney together. It gave us a chance to get a fancy 16th anniversary dinner at Sagra in Sydney. We went to a few craft breweries (Sauce, Stockade and Batch) and on long hike around the North Heads – which are the headlands to the north of the entrance to the Sydney Harbour from the Pacific Ocean. There are great views back to the city.

Summer’s Wedding: My cousin Summer was getting married in Iowa in September, so it was back on a plane for another quick trip to the US.  Brisbane->Sydney->Los Angeles->Chicago where we met up with my brother for the 4 hour drive to northeast Iowa. The wedding was on my uncle’s farm (where my dad grew up) and it was fun to catch up with the entire Handel side of the family.  5 days later we were back on a plane to Australia!

Australia Trip Prep: As mentioned above, we are planning on doing a 2+ month drive around Australia to explore a bit.  To further this goal, we sold the trusty Yaris and invested in a compact 4×4 vehicle – a Suzuki Grand Vitara.  This will enable us to go off the beaten path when on our adventure and we’ve always wanted to drive on beach! We took a beach driving course to learn how to correctly drive on the beach and gain confidence doing that and learn how to get ourselves “unbogged” if we find ourselves stuck.  Shortly after that training, we took a drive down to northern NSW where there was a 30km long stretch of beach we could drive.  Luckily we took that course, because in the end, getting up over the dunes to get off the beach proved a bit difficult and we got stuck (and unstuck) twice! I learned that speed it your best friend when driving uphill in the sand.

Quit jobs: In order enable a long visit back to the US and this upcoming trip around Australia – we decided to quit our jobs.  Our last day was November 14!  Hard to believe it’s been 2+ months already.  So far so good on that front!

Melbourne Visit: Now jobless, we figured we should go down and visit our friends in Melbourne for a long weekend.  We had a good time catching up with everyone and even got some randomly good weather. Our hosts (Dorota and Wojciech) pampered us as usual and I got to rile up their dogs.

USA for Thanksgiving / Christmas: We sure packed a lot into our 6 week visit back to the US this time. We met up with Sara’s aunt and cousins in Charlotte, NC for Thanksgiving.  Next we flew to Austin to spend a bit of time with my family and celebrate my sister’s 21st birthday.  Then we drove from Austin to New Orleans and spent a few nights exploring the Big Easy.  From there it was a long drive to Greenville, SC to stay a few nights with our friend Mike. We spent one of those nights up in Asheville, NC where we did a brewery tour of Sierra Nevada and ate a lot of good food.  Off to Irvington, VA for a quick visit with the Bralys after that.

We wound up back in Maryland about a week before Christmas and spent some time relaxing and catching up with local friends and celebrating Christmas with Sara’s family.

After Christmas we flew to Seattle where my aunt and uncle (my mom’s brother) were hosting a get together for that side of the family. The rented gorgeous house on Whidbey island and we got to hang out with them, my cousins and my brother for 3 nights.  Much like Melbourne, we lucked out with some atypical weather for that time of year and managed to get a really nice hike in.

After returning to Sara’s mom’s in Maryland, we had a week to relax before heading back to Australia.

Moving Forward: Now we’re back in Australia prepping for our adventure which will begin in 10 days time on the 28th.  On Australia day (26th) we will become Australian Citizens!