Tweed Heads, NSW, Australia

From Sydney we flew to Gold Coast Airport.

Our friend John was to pick us up, but he had to work, so his wife Corina, whom we had never met, met us at the airport. 

 Love the sign in the window.

Caitlyn's friend Ari was picking up Caitlyn from the airport, and Caitlyn was going to spend a few days with her.  After waiting a few minutes, and not being able to see each other, after establishing they were both at the airport, and both by the baggage claim, we figured out that we were at the Gold Coast airport, and Ari was at the Brisbane airport!

Several hours later, we all connected up and Caitlyn was on her way.

John and his family were awesome!  John took the next couple days off work so he could show us around the Gold Coast area.  We wanted to see dolphins, so he showed us dolphins.  (this guy is good!)

John took Dean and me to Byron Bay, where we hiked up to the lighthouse.

This is the easternmost point of Australia

Amazing scenery! 

Then to fish and chips for lunch, and a tour of Tweed Heads.

This marks the line between New South Wales and Queensland.  Tweed Heads is the City on the NSW side, and Coolangatta is in Queensland. (time zone change here too)

The skyline off in the distance is Surfer's Paradise.  From the name, we were expecting something much smaller.  The tallest building there is the tallest building in the southern hemisphere.  There, now you know.

Corina had a surprise for Dean when we got back.  She had found Dr. Pepper!  We haven't seen that since Wellington New Zealand!

John's family and Dean, Caitlyn and I all went to the "Outback Spectacular".  What an amazing production.  We also had a yummy dinner there, and found out the hard way that Caitlyn is very allergic to horses!

Are you diggin' our hats?  Yes, they made it all the way home to the U.S. with us!

I know this is really weird to take a picture of a toilet.  But New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji all had these...you choose whether it's a half flush of a full flush.  What a great idea!

We spent one whole day down at Coolangatta beach.  It was fun to watch the surfers, play in the water, and just soak in the sun!

 Caitlyn's legs were covered in but bites!

 Jellyfish.

We tried to wash them back into the ocean....not sure how much good it did.

 Caitlyn wanted us to see Ari's house and meet her family, so they came and got us and we spent Valentines evening looking for kangaroos, kookaburras, and seeing some beautiful scenery.

Oh, come on....it was Valentines day, we had to take some sappy pictures.

Kookaburra

We were on a quest to find kangaroo's and wallabies. (a wallaby is like a small kangaroo) In the field behind the cows were wallabies, so we got up close to the fence to get a better look and these cows decided we were pretty interesting!

Ari took us to see these cool waterfalls.

It was nice of these kookaburras to sit on this sign for the picture.

We had a great Valentines dinner at the Muir home.

After dinner, Ari volunteered for her parents to drive us all the way back to John's house.  They are great people.  

We get to have their son stay with us next week when he comes into town to go to the MTC, in preparation for his mission in the Philippines.