Mossman Gorge

After breakfast this morning, we headed out and drove north.  We drove to the city of Mossman, to the Mossman Gorge National Park.  We walked on a lovely trail that slowly increased from very easy to moderately difficult.  We took the longest trail--the Rainforest Circuit Trail.  And to think that up until a few weeks ago, we had never seen a rainforest!  We saw a fig tree, and a great Milky Pine that were just incredible!  We learned about buttress roots that hold up the tree in wet conditions.  The Mossman Gorge has wet tropic rainforests; although, this being the dry season, they're not so bad.  It was very humid, though.  Minnesota humid.  We walked on a suspension bridge and learned about how trees at high altitudes do cloud catchment, in which, as the clouds pass over the trees, water in the cloud "catches" on the trees and this is sent down to the lower rainforests--which is especially helpful during the dry season.  At one point I dared Randy to take a vine and swing across the forest yodeling like Tarzan.  I said that I would videotape it to show to the emergency room staff when we arrived there.  He declined.  He also was not in favor of kicking open a dirt ball filled with termites.  Go figure.  

As we were driving to and from Mossman, we saw what we had finally figured out a few days ago were fields and fields of sugarcane.   They even have cute little "cane railways," with tracks laid down between the road and the fields and tiny trains of cars drive down them to be filled with sugarcane.  We saw many being filled and full.  We pulled off the road in one part and went up close to the sugar cane.  It looked brown, but was green under the brown leaves.  We also saw banana trees with the bananas in plastic bags (to prevent pests?).  We also saw a field of palm trees full of coconuts.  Oh, the agriculture!  The children were surprised to see tractors and other farm machinery and thought the little cane trains were cute.

We also stopped in Port Douglas and walked down the street of cute little shops where we decided not to pay $12 for a tube of aloe vera gel for the children's sunburns.  We went down to the park by the ocean and a cute little non-denominational church, St. Mary of the Sea, was there.  Very cute.  We couldn't go in because of a wedding.  In fact, we saw the bride walking to the church.  Behind the alter is a huge picture window that looks over the ocean--perfect!

As we were driving, I looked past the palm trees and sugarcane fields toward the misty green mountains in the distance; it was an image I'll keep in my brain for a long time.

As I see all of the beautiful beaches and palm trees, I remember a poster that my best friend had up in her dorm room of a deserted white sand beach with palm trees and blue ocean.  She also had a poster of the Sidney Opera House.  Well, Tram, I've seen them both now!