Mornington Peninsula

This last weekend we hired a car and took a day-trip to the Mornington Peninsula. It's about an hour-and-a-half from our house and is home to wineries, gardens, natural hot springs and several popular beaches. The weather forecast called for scattered showers last Saturday, so it was a bit of a gamble. Indeed, it was kind of gloomy when we picked up our car, and the clerk at Budget warned us that it "was not a good day" to go. Hmmm... too bad we were signing the rental papers as he said that. So we headed to Mornington.

The first thing we did was get lost. It was a little stressful, I won't lie. I (Anthony) don't like being lost. I also refused on principal to use the new tollway (Over $20 to use a road?!?). So that didn't help. Luckily, our first destination was the Peninsula Hot Springs. So when we (eventually) made it, we were able to relax for a while. It was quite nice.

Although it rained a little on our way to the peninsula (which didn't help with being lost), the weather actually cleared pretty quickly and it was sunny and warm most of the day.

After the hot springs, we decided to head to the Enchanted Gardens, which included several large hedge mazes and other such attractions. Even though most of the day was sunny, the moment we arrived at the gardens it started to pour down rain. We passed on the gardens and instead decided to drive a bit longer.

We headed to the Cape Schanck lighthouse, which actually still operates (unlike most scenic lighthouses). The sun came back out, which is good, but what we didn't realize about Cape Schanck is that it is apparently the windiest place on earth. It was very scenic (see some pics below), but I have literally, no exaggeration, never felt wind like that before. There is a boardwalk down to the beach and we were warned, in all seriousness, to be careful as we progressed down the walkway because the winds got even stronger and we could actually get blown over the side railing! We decided not to go any farther.

We drove along the beach on our way home and found that most of the beaches were lined with "beach boxes", which are apparently little colorful beach huts that people use for lounging at the beach in the summer.

Oh, and perhaps the highlight of the trip was that we stopped by the hardware store (since we had a car) and bought a barbecue grill and an outdoor table set. It had been about 5 months since we have been able to BBQ. We've now had it every night since. I'm not sure how we lived without it.