First School Break Trip Day 3-Spirit of Tasmania to Launceston

Oh gastronomic extravagance you know no bounds!  This trip will see my formerly loose clothing imitating sausage casings by the end of it.

But first, we woke up sooooo early on the Spirit of Tasmania.  We all needed some snuggles considering the wake up call came before 5.

Here's Monkey celebrating that the tooth fairy came.  Or something like that.  Dave took it.

We rolled off of the Spirit of Tasmania at 6:10 

and hit the highway for Lancefield and a breakfast reservation that was an Easter gift from my parents.

Keeping in mind that it was time change and that no one had informed our bellies, we stopped at a cute little town called Carrick for "first breakfast".  Towns around here have public toilets and a spot to eat and we took full advantage. Here we are eating Just Right while the town slept.

Second breakfast was outstanding!  Dave and I each had a spinach, smoked salmon and brie omelet. The boys had pancakes, eggs, bacon and milkshakes. I swear I thought we'd never need to eat again!! Thank you Grandma and Grandpa!!

 We hit the local farmers market and picked up some yummy locally made jam.  We share a long held belief that the best jam is homemade jam.

We drove to Liffey Falls Reserve, our fuel efficiency greatly compromised by our recent food consumption and hiked down to see the falls. On our way driving there, we took a bit of a wrong turn and Dave ended up getting some great practice driving a manual transmission up a winding, dirt road.

Apparently there is a big tree!

Yup, it is a BIG TREE.

 It was a rather cloudy rainy day and we would have hiked for longer, but it started really pouring and it stopped being awesome.  We hiked back to our car and grabbed our lunch and a covered dry spot to eat it.

When trees fall, they just cut the trunks out of the way of the path, but don't remove any other part of the tree.  The boys tried to help out.

 I wanted to be as classy as the people next to us with the wine glasses and wine.  Dave suggested I would have an easier time if I aimed to be like the folks with the pick up truck taking shots of Jack Daniels. We stayed sober instead and drove home safely.

We stopped by Christmas Hills Raspberry farm to continue the festival of good eating. We'd heard nothing but good things about this place in the weeks leading up to the trip and we were not going to miss it. We indulged in chocolate covered raspberries and then shared a big tub of raspberry ice cream. Oh the deliciousness!

 Fully satisfied,  we drove to our accommodation for the night and got settled in

 We stayed in a rustic little one bedroom cabin in Swan Bay. Dave opted to take the boys out on ATVs while I was out for my run.

 I asked our host to suggest a 5-10km running route and she completely sh*t the bed on me.  She suggested a route that was about 15km!! I ran the first 8k with no problems, then had a minor stand off with a cow.  I'm going to digress tomorrow in to a story about my dad and my youth....