July 24^th, 2016

“Call me Ishmael."

The opening line to Herman Melville’s classic Moby-Dick, seems like a perfect way to launch into this edition of Travel Tales with Mary & Andy.

Since today is our 34^th wedding anniversary and we’re heading off for 3+ weeks in Australia and Tonga, we started with breakfast at Parkhouse Eatery, a local restaurant that consistently serves up good food with decent sized portions. Sitting outside with the morning sun giving us a warm glow to our faces, we gaze lovingly at each other over mimosas and croissants, still warm from the oven. After breakfast, we spent a leisurely morning strolling hand in hand along the white sandy beaches of La Jolla, where we reminisce about the past and speak of our future. After a few hours taking in the sand and salt air, we stop for a break to get a foot massage while we sip champagne and nibble on hand-dipped, Brandy infused, dark-chocolate-dipped strawberries, while I read poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary.

Yeah right, maybe in some parallel universe that’s what happened, but here’s how it really went down…

The breakfast at Parkhouse is correct, but with toast and eggs, and my sister, Nancy joining us. It’s then followed by Mary & I hustling home to clean our house as if a senior editor from Architectural Digest is arriving any minute to do a cover story on it. Between dusting, mopping, scrubbing and changing the sheets for our dog sitter, we manage to do 6 loads of laundry, wash the pups and finish packing. Oh, and we get out for a quick lunch and grabbed a burrito.

Cashing in 23 boatloads of frequent flier miles so we could sit up front of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner (had we been any further forward in the plane, we would have needed to have 1^st Officer stripes stitched onto the sleeves of our shirts), we jetted off to Australia. Sitting comfortably cocooned in our encapsulated silver sanctuary of luxury, the West Coast grew smaller and smaller in our rearview mirror. After 15-hours in the air and our passports dutifully inked, we were welcomed to Sydney, only to board another flight for a 3-hour flight north to Cairns.

silver sanctuary Sitting comfortably cocooned in our encapsulated silver sanctuary of luxury

Arriving in Cairns, we drag our wilted butts to the car rental agency, where we pick up a right-handed drive car for an hour’s drive to the Far North Queensland town of Port Douglas.

Gone are the highways and high-rises of San Diego and Sydney as we head north on the designated highway. Beyond our windshield, a broken white line coarses down the thin strip of asphalt directing us toward the horizon, as our adventure begins.