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Back in Geelong again. It’s 7 AM and we had a mixed night of sleeping and short naps. We hopped on the bikes without a plan of what we were going to do next, heading to a McDonald’s for the free wifi, some coffee and some what ifs.
Google maps showed a Maccas (Aussie for McD’s) about 3 miles away, but the address led us to a dead end in an industrial park. We found a second one that was about 2 mi away, so headed to that. Our options at this point were taking a train to Melbourne and eventually Sydney, heading west toward Adelaide, or heading on what’s called the great Ocean Road. In the end we opted for the Great Ocean Road (GOR), me thinking we would just go far enough along it to get along the coast for a while and then head back and do the Melbourne Sydney train thing. Remember that as you read the posts for the next couple of days.
We had to retrace our steps of a few days before when we went into Geelong, this time going through the city and then again onto excellent trails. We went through the surfing capital of Torquay. We were trying to find a new gas canister for our camp stove, but none of the outfitters in town had anything like it. Same with hardware stores. We’ll have to figure out another way to get coffee for the moment.
It was after Torquay that we started to head downhill to the ocean. We were on our way to Lorne and often rerouted ourselves to avoid the extra hills of the bicycling directions. The road had good shoulders and we were fine with that. It wasn’t all smooth sailing and there were a lot of ups and downs along the Ocean Road. For having been designed in the 1920s, though, it was amazingly well-engineered low-gradient roads; most 2 to 3% and occasional 5 or 6%, but nothing steeper than that. And this road was built by hand by what they call the diggers who were servicemen from World War I who returned home and needed work. Much like our CCC after the depression.
The views from the top of the hills were amazing. Reminiscent of the Oregon and California coasts, but with a much better roadway. Dana made it to Lorne long before I did, and we did our civic duty and brought some rain with us. There was a state campground there, but it was closed because of flooding earlier in the year. The commercial park across the street was not appealing, but right next door was a hotel at a reasonable price, so I booked it. We made supper of rice and beans in the hotel room, then went for an exploratory walk of the town. We met a Taiwanese couple who had trained in the States and chatted with them awhile.
Dana extended her walk a bit and I headed back to the hotel to get some blogging in before bed. We both soon crashed into our warm, dry bed to get a good rest to tackle the next day (Going to continue south on the GOR as you might have expected ;D ).
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