"I never want to come here again."

That's what Sam said during our visit to Cradle Mountain yesterday.

It may have had something to do with the fact that we were making him hike.

(Kind of reminds me of when I asked "Do we have to get out and see this thing?" when we arrived at the Grand Canyon on a family vacation. I don't have the defense of having been 4 years old, though. More like 14...)

I didn't really think that the hiking would have been a problem, due to my children's usual Energizer-bunny-like energy levels, but apparently it was asking a bit much. Joe and I spent at least half of the 90 minutes or so we were walking with at least one child attached to us in some way. The other half of the time Joe did a really, really good job of manipulating them into walking by convincing them they were on various missions that needed to be completed.

But anyway....pictures will come later next week when I am done with the book I am doing for work and have more than 5 minutes of spare time to do a blog post. (That's why the posts have been a bit light lately.)

Until then, here's a quick list of what did excite the kids on our weekend trip (since the beautiful scenery of Cradle Mountain obviously did not).

1. The fact that our hotel room was Room #1
2. The jets in the hotel bathtub
3. The wallaby munching on grass outside our balcony
4. Getting to wear "grown-up" seat belts on the shuttle bus ride
5. Getting handed a cookie for breakfast since the breakfast buffet at the hotel was $25 a person (Oh wait - kids were half price - so it only would have cost us $75 to eat our morning meal.)
6. Hearing Mom say, "Poop! Don't step in the poop!" as we dodged wombat droppings on the path