Day 5-Tasmania Hobart to Queenstown

 

After leaving my Hobart Hotel and navigating my way out of town and towards the west coast of Tasmania I traveled through high country meadows, grasses colored for fall.  That orangish grass reminds me very much of Montana. Although the trees are sill green even though they seem mostly deciduous.

From another angle-I think I'm about to enter those mountains on this trip.

I was stopped at a place with the "i" marker, similar to a roadside marker in the States.

I loved these grasses with the mountains behind!  I think this one may make the gallery wall.

After that I did find myself in the mountains, traveling winding roads (again) within tree tunnels, sigh.  I did stop at a place called  The Wall (thanks for recommending it Jo!)  A wonderful art installation depicting some of the areas history in massive wood bias relief.  Beautifully done although not complete in places in order to show the process.  The only criticism I had was concerning the gift shop.  They had nice local crafts etc but no items that would fit handily in a suitcase!  There were two tour buses there so they missed out on some additional income.  This is something I am finding to be  normal here-so far I haven't bought ANY goodies to take home!

Now for an interesting story, or maybe a disastrous one take your pick.  I arrived in Queenstown hungry and tired to discover I was booked into a hotel (I'm using that word lightly) where there was no one on site to check you into your room (at that point I still hadn't figured out how to make a call with the international stuff involved and their check in was "Virtual")  You entered a code and dug your room key out yourself.  I had a premonition that this wasn't going to be good.  The lady at the next hotel managed to get the owner? on the phone and she told me I would be in Dorm 1 Room 8.  Just let me say I would NEVER have booked this if I thought I'd be dealing with a window that was frozen open, a bed with two dead pillows, one blanket and a shared bathroom!  Fortunately, there was a heater so I didn't freeze.  I did not sleep well and was up early ready to leave.  There was just one little hitch there: I needed gas.  More on Day 6!