May 18, 2011- Day 23
Where: Byron Bay to Benleigh, QLD
Dinner: Pasta from a shop
Third and final state!
This morning we woke up and it was overcast. It was pretty early and we decided we wanted to find a coffee shop where we could charge the computer and catch up on some emails. Yesterday we saw pretty much all of Byron Bay and did a nice walk up to the lighthouse, so we decided to go to the town of Bangalow about 15 minutes from Byron. Byron Bay was really nice, but if it's not warm enough to be on the beach and you don't really want to spend a lot of money, it's not anything too extremely special. We left thinking we might go back and hit the beach again if it got warm.
In Bangalow we found a great cafe with outlets available. We ended up ordering some really tasty breakfast, including croque madame and macadamia nut loaf with poached pears and ricotta. I also had a really good cappuccino, which is always a nice surprise. Maybe it's a bit strange, but coffee shops seriously just make me feel good. I remember being young and visiting my sister in Seattle where we would also go to her favorite coffee shops. I think maybe that's where I started associating coffee shops with feeling happy and comfortable. I do have a lot of fond memories in coffee shops, both ones I've worked in and visited :) Anyways, it felt great this morning just to hang around in this nice one we found. Now I have enough computer juice to keep up the “captain's log” for a few more days.
It rained for a little while, and then it cleared up but didn't get warm. For this reason we decided to drive north instead of going back to Byron Bay. We made it all the way up to the Queensland border, and we crossed over to Coolongatta. New state!! Queensland is our final state, and according to the commercials “summertime is waiting for me here.” It was cloudy in NSW and we were joking about how when we crossed into QLD it would be perfectly sunny. What was crazy is that when we got to Captain Cook's Lookout, a lookout that is halfway in NSW and halfway in QLD, there were black clouds on one side (NSW) and blue skies on the other side (QLD). It really was quite strange, and pretty awesome we thought. Unfortunately the black clouds ended up crossing the border and it sprinkled a while this evening.
We're staying in Burleigh tonight in a parking lot near the beach. Once again there are a lot of no overnight parking signs, but we'll test our luck. I think we're in an OK spot, and I'm not sure how highly they enforce those rules in the off season. We don't really have plans from here. It's about halfway through the trip now and we're over halfway to Cairns. We planned on having more time up north than down south because it will be warmer, but if we get more rainy days like today I'm not sure what we'll do. If you aren't into shopping all the time, it's a bit hard to find ways to fill the day if it's too cold to be on the beach. We'll just see what we find, but we should be able to occupy ourselves for a while here on the Gold Coast. I do hope we get to enjoy these world famous beaches though!
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