Blue Mountains & 4WD Tour with USA Guests

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• published: 31 Aug 2016
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Weekend four-wheel driving and touring trip with our American friends to the Blue Mountains and beyond. On Day 1, the tour consisted of visiting the Kings Tablelands lookout at Wentworth Falls (film location of 2010 Aussie movie "Tomorrow When The War Began"). Wentworth Falls is a small town on top of the Blue Mountains, 100km (~60 miles) west of Sydney and just "around the corner" from Katoomba, the "capital centre" of Blue Mountains. From that amazing lookout, we went to Echo Point at Katoomba and walked over to the Three Sisters. On the way back, we stopped at a nice coffee shop, where our guests bought some coffee to take with them back to the States. From there we went to Jenolan Caves. Our guests were quite pleased to see kangaroos along the way, in the wild and alongside the roadway. After we finished at Jenolan Caves, we went to Rydal to do the "Mt Walker" track, starting from the Coal Hill, over the Fire Truck Hill, through Coxs River, past the Unimog Hill and the Mt Walker summit to reach the campground, where we had a quick break besides the river. From there we proceeded north, over the green meadows, to Great Western Highway to complete the track. After entering the highway, we went to Lithgow McDonald's for a quick feed. Lithgow is a small city, 150km (~90mi) west of Sydney and on the other side of the Great Dividing Range. After a quick bite, we topped up gas and proceeded towards the Glowworm Tunnel via the State Mine Gully. We had a quick stop at the lookout opposite of the Pipeline Track for a bit of sightseeing. From there we rushed to our camp spot near the Glowworm Tunnel end. We lit a massive fire (as per usual), had dinner and enjoyed some marshmallows with Hershey's that our guests brought with them all the way from USA. Day 2 started obviously with breakfast. Then we felt like we needed to "stretch the legs" with our fourbies again at an adjacent man-made gully next to our camp spot. After getting the blood circulation to a satisfying level, we packed up and drove to the end of the gravel road, to the car park of the Glowworm Tunnel. From the car park, it was about a 20-minute walk to reach the start of the tunnel. Along the way, we found a side track and walked though some dark, yet amazing caves. Finally, after reaching the tunnel, we proceeded through and went all the way to the other end, entering a beautiful forest, like it's taken out from a piece of paradise. Yes, we saw a lot of glow worms along the way in the long, dark tunnel, which looked like stars in the sky. It was too dark for the camera to capture that sight. After returning back to our vehicles, we proceeded to the Lost City, a place filled with pagoda's, naturally eroded and formed thousands of years ago. After enjoying the views at the Lost City, we started making our way out via Ranger Bob, to use it as an excuse for another wheel. After Ranger Bob, we played a little bit at the Moon Rock and then went over to the Wombat Holes for some more wheeling along the way, as we were exiting the area towards the Zig Zag Railway at Clarence. While we were inflating our tyres in the gravel car park of the abandoned (in 2013) Zig Zag Railway, our American guests went to check out the station. After inflating the tyres, we got back onto the main road towards Sydney via Bell and Katoomba. Not all the details from the above story are shown in this video. Here are the segments shown: 00:08 Echo Point (fog roll over) 00:54 Jenolan Caves 02:49 Kangaroos on the roadside 02:56 Coal Hill 04:09 Coxs River 04:55 Campfire 05:03 Glowworm Tunnel Road 06:11 Glow worm 06:40 Ranger Bob 09:36 Moon Rock 10:10 Wombat Holes For slideshow pics of more scenery from lookouts, tunnel, camping and offroading during this trip, please watch this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyqv3-qeIoM Feel free to leave your comment or feedback and share the video. Thanks. E N J O Y