goodbye bay

when it was time to say goodbye to the bay we celebrated by rushing to finish everything that still needed to be done, having lunch, hanging out a little, and grilling out with friends.

goodbye beach:

 goodbye monkey bar:

goodbye curry and delicious magnums:

goodbye lemon lime and bitters, goodbye timtams:

 goodbye caravan!

 here we all are on our last afternoon:

 the girls and i combined all of our different colored polishes and had a polish party.

 ^^grilling out on the porch. des made us sofrito! and she and doris made hommeade mac and cheese and burgers :)  i guess sometimes we do eat really well in the bay.^^

 the sharkys came over and we hung out for a while.  i'd say we had a golden gay time.

the hardest part of leaving the bay is saying goodbye to the water and the life in and around it.

 ^^the shop has a stuffed animal representation of the main animals in the bay.  i wanted to buy all of them! emu, literal tiger shark, dolphin, pelican, kangaroo, i'll take them all!^^

so we had a full day of goodbyes and then headed out the next morning on a dash 8.  it was very exciting to get to fly down to perth!! not only does that mean we have a 2 hour flight instead of a stressful 10 hour drive on an isolated highway full of road trains, it means we get to see awesome views of where eric has spent the last 6 years doing research from the sky!

 this is denham, the town we drive to every week or two for groceries:

 below is peron station, your last stop before deflating your tires to drive on the road to peron point:

 we flew north and then flew south which allowed us to see peron point!  that point out there is what i've been posting about (here and here) with all of the filming going on.  can you see any beaching dolphins?!

 ^^so point peron is on the left of this picture, and to the right you can distinctly make out the channels off the tip.  these are the channels where eric runs transects to study the sponging dolphins.  it's very cool to actually be able to see the channels.  you know they are there because the gps onboard the boat tells you they are there, but seeing is believing!^^

 ^^at one point we flew through some clouds and this bizarre looking shadow of the plane surrounded by a weirdly colored rainbow appeared.^^

and finally.... hello perth!  such a different landscape.

hello beer flight!

and hello real food!  so happy to be back to civilization.   maybe a little too happy :)