Thursday 5 September 2019 - Glasshouse Mountains

Set off this morning for a drive to see the views.  We headed towards the Glasshouse Mountains and came across a sign for a lookout at Mount Beerburrum so detoured up the dirt road.  Now we had come prepared for walking, yeah sure.  I had thongs on and Ian had sandals.  We pulled up at the carpark to find it was a 1.5 km round trip to the top.  The only trouble was it was more or less straight up.  As you walked you had to lean forward so you didn't fall back down.  The lean was so great I felt like I could touch my toes or the ground.  I got two thirds of the way and had had enough.  Apart from huffing and puffing like a steam train my feet were sliding out of my thongs.  I was trying to grip onto them with my toes which lead to my toes cramping.  At this point I threw the towel in and started to return back to the car park.  Ian continued on and these are the views from the top of Mount Beerburrum.

The trip down was just as bad.  You were leaning backwards so you didn't tumble down.  My feet were now sliding forward in my thongs and the piece that goes between your toes was digging into the skin.   And don't start me on the mosquitoes.  There were hundreds of them.  Now I must say, apart from the thongs, it was nice amongst the trees.  At one point I rounded a bend to see a head on the edge of the footpath.  The body was in the greenery.  I couldn't tell if it was a snake or a lizard.  I started stomping my feet figuring that if it was a snake it would return to hide in the foliage.  The head didn't move just looked at me.  I stood still for about 5 minutes watching it until, I presume, it decided I wasn't a threat and moved out onto the path.  Thank goodness it is not a snake.  I stayed still and it moved across the path.   I continued on and arrived at the carpark.  While waiting for Ian I was reading the information board to find what had crossed the path was a Lace Monitor, although not a full grown one.   When Ian arrived back we set off in the car heading for Glasshouse Mountains lookout.

Now this is my type of lookout.   The car park is at the lookout.   The only problem with this is that tour buses also visit.  Luckily for us the tour bus pulled up as we were reading to leave so we didn't have to share the view with a bus load.

Yes, that is our car

We continued along the Glasshouse Mountains Tourist Drive and on to Maroochydore.  With a mixture of roadworks and traffic we were over Maroochydore before we had arrived.  We were heading towards Sunshine Plaza when Ian saw a shopping centre with Harvey Norman so we headed there instead.  Only trouble was it had Harvey Norman and then the rest of the shops were furniture shops.  There wasn't any food outlets even a supermarket, which we needed to get a couple of things.  Having had more than enough we returned to the car and back towards the van via Caboolture.   Travelling along the freeway they have display boards which were flashing the news that there was an accident ahead with lengthy delays expected.  Luckily Miss Google Maps also detected the accident and then redirected us around it.  Our aim when we arrived in Caboolture was to get a few things from the supermarket.  They had an underground car park.   We fitted under the first height restriction only to find that this lane just drove straight out the other side of the car park.  We couldn't fit under the height restriction for the actual car park so we drove around and found a parking spot and had to walk back to the shopping centre.  We had a late lunch, grabbed a few things at the supermarket and then returned back to the van for the night.  The temperature is currently in the low 30's but luckily there is a cool breeze coming off the water which cools the van down for sleeping.