J-Team Weekend!

With Stephanie and Elliot in Adelaide for the weekend, Jay, Josh and I were left to entertain ourselves. We rented a car and headed for the Yarra Valley wineries on Friday afternoon to do some tastings and have dinner. Yarra Valley is the area north of Melbourne, famous for its wineries. It was a very classy afternoon of sipping wines and tasting cheeses, complete with a gourmet dinner on a hill overlooking vineyards and hills, watching the most incredible sunset.

Here we are just as our main courses arrived, the sun was going down. Too bad we didn't get a picture of the most amazing fig appetizer ever - fresh figs, stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped with proscuitto, broiled with rosemary infused olive oil. Holy moly. Our chef even came out to chat, giving some recommendations for our upcoming trip to Tasmania (he was a Tassie himself).

Here is a shot I took of Jay enjoying the sunset over the valley from our dinner table.

The following day, in the same car, we drove out to Wilson's Prominatory to have a completely different experience. Wilson's Prom is a fantastic national park on a penisula in the southeast corner of Victoria. We hiked a ridiculously long trail through a rainforest, to be rewarded at the end of the 10.5km with a secluded beach known as Sealers' Cove. After the ridiculously long 10.5km back to the start point, we had just enough time to go listen to the squeaky sand on Squeaky Beach and make it to Whiskey Bay to have our second incredible sunset of the weekend (both part of Wilson's Prom).

Josh and I follow the trail through the every-changing foliage of the Sealers' Cove hike.

Even after such a long and tiring hike, I had some energy left for acrobatics on Squeaky Beach, where the fine, white quartz sand squeaks as you walk through it.

Here are Jay and Josh climbing the beach boulders to join me on top on our own private sunset-viewing lookout point at Whiskey Bay.

This is my favorite shot from the whole weekend - the three of us wrapping up an exhausting day watching the sunset from the top of those beach boulders.

Little did we know that the next day would be equally as trying - with the eight-plus hour cricket match . . .