Coral Bay, Western Australia (again) (March, 2013)

Coral Bay was the consensus highlight of the trip.  Tranquil, aqua waters, lots of shallow beach for the kids to play on, and fine, soft, clean sand make Coral Bay one of the prettiest places we've ever been.  This time we booked a snorkeling tour on a glass bottom boat and it was well worth the $140 for the family.  The reef was incredible, very dense, and with all kinds of different coral and fish.  It was great that even Zander, Nash, and Addy could see all the fish and the beautiful reef under the water with the glass bottom boat.

Alex convinced Eliza to jump in and take a swim with the snorkel on.  They swam out over the reef for about 20-30 minutes and Eliza wasn't scared...a big accomplishment.

Rick, Cody, and Harvey took a walk down the beach to where there was a shark nursery.  Rick and Cody went snorkeling out to look for some reef sharks...only saw one and it quickly bolted away into deeper waters.

Next stop...Canarvon.

Exmouth, Turquoise Bay, and Yardi Creek, Western Australia (March, 2013)

We had originally intended on staying most of Tuesday in Coral Bay, but it was raining when we got up, so we decided to take off early and drive to Exmouth to see if the weather was better.  When we got to Exmouth, the sun was shining, and it was hot (but a bit windy).

We stayed 2 nights at the Lighthouse Caravan Park on the Indian Ocean side of the cape.  We decided to go straight to Turquoise Bay, the highlight of the area.  We hung out at Turquoise Bay most of the day, did the drift snorkel a bunch of times.  Ryder is our little snorkeler.  Sawyer was scared, but bravely did it once, and Eliza put her fears aside and did it once.

We broke ranks from the Kemps...they went back up to Exmouth to eat and we ventured further south, eventually making our way down to Yardi Creek.  We stopped at Oyster Stacks, Sandy Bay, and a few other places along the way.  Yardi Creek was beautiful.  We wanted to take a boat trip, but nobody was there to take us (just 3 empty boats).

The next morning, Rick took Cody spearfishing just across the road from the caravan park.  We were out there about 2 hours, and after diving down and poking our heads in and out of small caves, Rick finally shot a Spangled Emperor about 2 feet in length and pinned it to the back of the cave.  He was kind enough to let me pull the spear out of the rock and drag the fish to shore.

We spent the remainder of the day at Sandy Bay, but it was terribly windy and we ended up leaving pretty early.  We had dinner up at the lighthouse and watched the sunset from the top of the hill.

It was now time to make our way back to Perth.  We decided to depart the next morning early and spend an extra day at Coral Bay since the rain cut us off the 1st time through.

Coral Bay, Western Australia (March, 2013)

We stopped in Canarvon for lunch before arriving into Coral Bay Sunday around 2pm.  We wandered out to have a look at the beach and to feed the fish.  The sand was a beautiful pinkish-white.  There was an incredible shallow bay with aqua colored water almost resembling the color of a swimming pool.  We wandered out to where a small crowd had gathered in knee deep water and found a few dozen large fish (18-36 inches in length) that were being fed by the small crowd.  They were all around your feet, swimming back and forth between your legs.  It was a pretty cool experience.  The kids were a bit intimidated at first, because the fish were pretty big.

We spent all day Monday at the beach, relaxing.  We did some snorkeling, but didn't go around the corner to Paradise Beach (where the better reef is and the good snorkeling).  There were quite a number of large fish right in the bay that kept us content.

A large square-headed fish swam up to shore as if to say "Hi" to us.  It beached itself for about 5 seconds, let us touch it, then wiggled backwards and shot back out into the bay.  It darted back at us a few times before disappearing forever.

Next Stop...Exmouth, Turquoise Bay, Yardi Creek

Shell Beach, Denham, and Monkey Mia, Western Australia (March, 2013)

We probably took off too quickly and without thinking from Kalbarri.  As we got a couple hours down the road, I noticed that I was running low on fuel and had no cell phone service.  I turned the air conditioner off despite the tremendous heat and slowed down (I've heard you get better gas mileage if you drive slower).  I was still quite a ways ahead of Rick and definitely out of range of the walkie-talkie.

Cutting to the chase, we ran out of gas and found ourselves in the 95+ degree heat, stranded on the side of the road, literally in the middle of nowhere.  I guess I should have been more aware that there wouldn't be more than one gas station every 3-4 hours of driving and I needed to fill up whenever I got the chance.  I had 3/4+ of a tank when we left Kalbarri and assuming that would be sufficient was obviously not the correct guess.

Luckily Rick still had fuel and he picked me up on the side of the road and 5 minutes later we were at a petrol station.  The damage was much less than it could have been (a $53 empty gas can and 15 minute time delay).  Lesson learned.

We stopped at Shell Beach and enjoyed an amazing few hours there.  The sun was hot and setting quickly.  We could walk out into the bay more than a kilometer and the water was less than knee deep. Zander loved it.  He was running, laughing, and splashing in the water, amazed at how far out he could go and still touch the bottom.  We buried Nash and Harvey in shells on the beach and enjoyed the uniqueness of the spot.

We stopped to eat in Denham and arrived at the Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort (fancy name for an RV park) well after dark.

We got up early to see the famed dolphins that swim into shore every morning.  They didn't disappoint. All of the kids got to feed the dolphins a fish from the shoreline.  Wild emus roamed freely around the caravan park and tried to take our lunch from us as we ate in our camping chairs and picnic tables.  We caught some small fish from the shore and fought off the seagulls as they stole most of them from our buckets.  We caught over 100 hermit crabs and had them race to the ocean.

We hung by the pool and ate "icy poles".  The well water turned the kids swimsuits rusty orange.

Next stop Coral Bay.

We made a quick stop to see the stromatolites.

Our motorhome, parked at Shell Beach.

At the entrance to Shell Beach.

Daddy, playing with Zander in the shallow water.

Burying Nash in the shells at Shell Beach.

Nash and Zander going for a walk at Shell Beach.

Sawyer

Kalbarri, Western Australia (March, 2013)

For the first stop on our Western Australian motorhome adventure with our "mates," the Kemps we headed off to Kalbarri.  We stayed at the Kalbarri Tudor Holiday Park, which was a 6+ hour drive from our house in Kingsley, Western Australia.  We got there rather late and were hoping not to run any kangaroos or emus down with our motorhomes.

The kids had some fun bouncing on the giant air pillow and playing on the playground before we were told to keep quiet.  We had some food and went to bed pretty early.

In the morning we got up and set out to see the tide pools and some of the scenery around Kalbarri.  We drove down to the coast and took a short walk to see the coastal cliffs, then made our way to the tide pools.  Ryder got tossed around in the waves while exploring the pools and cut his knee up pretty bad.  We had to go to the Kalbarri hospital, which is more of a clinic.  We were there a couple hours and Ryder got a couple stitches (the highlight of his day...he couldn't wait to get back to Perth and show his mates).

After waiting around in the hospital so long, we felt we needed to get on our way as Monkey Mia was a bit of a drive and we wanted to see a couple sites on the way in.

Next stop Shell Beach, Denham, and Monkey Mia...