Posted by Mad Violinist | Posted in Travel | Posted on 02-01-2012
After checking out of the lodge, day 3 soon provided us with the best view of the trip so far – lemonthyme lodge in the rear view mirror, behind the dust of course. I should have taken a photo, it was beautiful.
We were headed to Strahan, but stopped a few times as we found views to photograph. It would be strange to write about photos I took, so just wait til I post them instead.
We had a nice lunch at Strahan, and drove around Strahan making sure we saw it all. We didn’t have time to ride the train or view the area in the sea plane. We’d love to do the steam train ride to Queenstown in the future, but it takes 5 hours plus 45 min coach ride, we’d have to allow a day for it.
Our next and final destination for the day was Queenstown. It took some time getting out of Strahan, since the GPS was having a cow because I wouldn’t turn right into a road that wasn’t there, and drive through a fence and into a paddock. When I kept driving it was telling me to turn around and go back, and drive into the paddock. I turned around, assuming that there must be a road further back to take, and again the gps insisted I drive through the fence into the paddock, and when I didn’t, it was ordering me to go back and do what I was told. I didn’t, I instead drove back into town and found a road sign to Queenstown, which I trusted more than the gps, and followed it. All the while, the gps was nagging me to go back to the paddock. Once on the right road, the gps gave up and showed us the way from the road we were on. The GPS was correct however, if we had driven off the road, through the fence and across the paddock, and through the trees, we would have eventually met up with this road we were on. I don’t want to take short cuts like that in our small hire car, maybe a 4wd.
Queenstown is great, lots to photograph, but we haven’t photographed it yet, we’ll get out in the morning to do that. We are very tired, so we drove all over town and have seen it all. It was very hot here today, so we decided to relax in the motel bar, and then moved into the dining room for dinner. The food is excellent, and for a motel, the room is as good as they come. The West Coaster motel gets the thumbs up from us if you just want to stop over in Queenstown.
Our final destination tomorrow is Hobart, where I can use my laptop. I’ll write more then.
I agree with everything on this post. We found this place on the Internet on NYE and booked it fearing that we had to back track to lemonthyme lodge again just for sleeping. The travel agent insisted that it was fine, but we knew better. How ridiculous was that idea, lemonthyme is 2.5 hours drive back, just to go to bed, and we’d have to drive back here again, 2.5 hours tomorrow, plus drive another 4.5 hours to Hobart.
The food was fabulous and for someone who was running the place with one other person – checking folks in, taking phone reservations, serving drinks at the bar and serving dinner, the service could not be better. The price tag – $99- night and meals a fraction of what we had at lemonthyme lodge, this place is a godsend!