The Johnsons' Journal

For the long Easter weekend, we packed up our little used camping gear and headed to the Grampians National Park.  The first stop was at the Balconies lookout. The view was spectacular, you could see for miles (or kilometers) out over a valley in the park.

View from the Balconies lookout, of aforementioned "Balconies"

The 1 km hike really took it out of Courtney and she needed a rest on a conveniently placed chair.

Resting on a stump chair

Next, we did a short hike down to the base of McKenzie Falls. This was pretty awesome. Even though it’s not the largest falls we’ve seen, it was very picturesque and a perfect place to have a picnic lunch and read books for a while.

McKenzie Falls

After this excitement and a bit more hiking around during the afternoon we were ready for dinner, so we made our way back to our camp and fired up our Pocket Rocket. Also check out our sweet Hyundai Getz, in Yellow this time! We got a red one for our trip to the Yarra Valley. What you don’t see is me in this picture, matching the car perfectly in my yellow and black checkered shirt!

Courtney enjoying her dinner in the tent

Our favorite hike was to the Pinnacle. We woke up early to get on the trail before the crowds started coming out. We were the second car in the parking lot.

Hike to the Pinnacles

After startling a wallaby in the bush along the trail (I’m not sure who was spooked more, the animal or us. Courtney actually screamed a little) We made it to the Pinnacle which as you would guess is a huge rock outcropping at the summit of one of the mountains in the range.

View from the Pinnacle

As you can see the view from here was pretty awesome too, even better than the day before.

Courtney at the Pinnacle

We decided instead of circling back to continue on through the “Grand Canyon” to another parking lot down the road.

On the way down

When we got to the Wonderland Carpark we found that instead of walking back along the road the whole way we could walk about half way to Turret falls then continue on to our car on the smaller highway from there. When we got to the falls we were kinda disappointed though. It didn’t quite look like the photo on the information board. I decided to try to make the most of it and tried to get a better angle at the falls. Unfortunately I forgot that water is slippery, and water on mossy rocks is even more so. As I traversed the front of the falls to get in position, I got a chance to test the temperature of the water. I fell about 5 ft straight into a man hole sized pool of water which was surprisingly deep. I went in up to my shoulders, daypack, camera and all. While the pack and myself came out unscathed, the camera wasn’t quite as happy. This meant a very damp 4 km walk back to the car and the end of the photos from the trip.

Just before Scott fell in