Loryn’s birthday had arrived and she wanted to know what I was going to do. So I told her nothing ….. and yes I enjoyed it 🙂
So on Friday night I mentioned it’d be worth packing clothes for an overnighter, and it might be a couple of degrees colder than here. Oh and dress comfy, not fancy. Seriously I thought I was gonna die for a while, but it was still fun.
Saturday morning turned out to be a bloody beauty of a day, so we jumped in the old Jackaroo and headed down to Nabiac for the obligatory coffee. From there I got the hell of the highway and headed inland to Firefly. From here we wound out way through the hills past Bunyah and Markwell to Bulahdelah, and the cut across to Dungog.
After a nice lunch at the Dungog Bakery we headed out on Monkerai Road and did the loop through (the bottom part of Chichester) Skimmings Gap Road out to Chichester Dam. It was bloody enjoyable drive through the forest with some amazing views.
After looking around the dam we hit the road turning off towards Salisbury. I was originally thinking of doing the larger look out to the Mount Allyn lookout, but time was quickly disappearing. So instead cut across the Gap Road to the Allyn River. Still a bloody nice drive, and did I mention that Loryn still had no idea where we were headed… 🙂
The run southbound along the Allyn River is also quite enjoyable, passing places such as Just Been Laid and Serendipity on Allyn.
I mentioned to Loryn that I was feeling thirsty so we stopped at the Farmers Hotel in Vacy for a drink. After a while I figured we better keep going, so we all jumped in the car, put the seatbelts on and drove the 50 metres to the lodge next door (yep she was still wanting to kill me).
I had booked us in for the 3-course dinner meal which was kind of interesting. Ellie gets nervous around dogs, and it is a dog-friendly place – in that they are in the dining room with you. On top of this the food was Persian, so totally different to what we normally do. Funnily enough, it was a pretty cool experience and Ellie polished a fair whack of it off.
A drink at the pub afterwards to wash it down finished off a good day.
Sunday arrived and Loryn still had no idea what was next. We had breakfast at the lodge which again was different but yummy – I didn’t know porridge came like that! This time Ellie said – nup, not happening and stuck to toast 🙂
We headed south down to the Tocal Homestead where they had a Peak Into The Past event on, which I somehow already had tickets for
Leaving Tocal we decided to head over to Clarence Town to have lunch at the Erringhi Pub. Unfortunately the kitchen was closed but they redirected us to the Bowling Club where we ended up having Chinese instead of a steak. Still good though.
After lunch Ellie decided that we should have an ice cream on our way home. The only place I could think of that had an ice cream joint open was Tea Gardens on the Myall River, so chocolate ice cream happened.
The run back up the highway was like a rude awakening back to civilisation and an end to our weekend, but still for a quick break it did the job. Oh and happy birthday Loryn, now to consider next years options…