Adventure Schedule

We are doing our best to see and do as much as we can on our trip. We've decided to visit four of the most popular East Coast cities in Australia. We start in Melbourne, then we're off to Brisbane for a few days and on to Cairns and the spectacular Great Barrier Reef and then finally on to lovely Sydney.

Our schedule is kind of crazy, lots going on, so we'll see how things fall together. This is our rough itinerary.

Sunday October 2nd
Seattle TO LA
LA to Auckland NZ (13 Hour flight, and two hour layover in Auckland)

Auckland to Melbourne

Day 1, get over possible jet-lag (We will most definitely have jet-lag, Trish and I have never had the pleasure of this experience...should be fun) and take Gram to Rod Laver Arena (7 Minutes from our hotel by car, and home of the Australian Open)

Day 2, Bike Tour through Melbourne, we start near the beach and make our way through the city past the botanical gardens, into downtown, and some other spots we know nothing about.
Day 3, Lanes & Arcade Tour, this is an architectural tour through the shopping districts, so its historical with cool shops & antiques mixed in.

Day 4, All day tour of the coast, here is the info, too much to sum up:

Pass world famous Bells Beach, home to World Surfing Championships. Travel the length of the Great Ocean Road passing towering limestone cliffs, sweeping white beaches and stunning forest scenery. Truly one of the worlds great scenic coastal drives. Contrast abound between rugged

coast and verdant rainforest living side by side. See the amazing Twelve Apostles, limestone stacks rising dramatically from the Southern Ocean . See Loch Ard Gorge and be swept away by the romantic and tragic story of love and lives lost aboard the Loch Ard. Explore Port Campbell National Park. Discover the tragic history of over 50 ships wrecked along this rugged coastline. Continue beyond Port Campbell to the remnants of London Bridge. There is much more that we've omitted, I'm sure there will be a future blog post on our 8 hour bus tour!

Depart from Melbourne to the Gold Coast
Where we'll meet up with out Travel Agent, Murf. She's going to show us around the Gold Coast and, I hear its pretty much like Florida, we're only there for 2 days. Murf is going to have us over to her house for an Australian "Barbie", Paul Hogan style (minus the shrimp for us)

Gold Coast to Cairns/Port Douglas. We're staying in Port Douglas which is an hour north of Cairns, a lot more relaxed and less people.

Day 1, Cruise out to the Great Barrier Reef Snorkeling (Takes two hours to get out to the reef, will need to pack some Dramamine for Trish!)

Day 2, Free Day, probably just hang at the beach and check out Port Douglas

Day 3, Bus Tour to Cape Tribulation, one of the world's oldest rainforest's. Its supposed to be like a real life Avatar, super tropical, hot as hell, and some gigantic spiders (There will be screams). We take a tour through the rainforest and then a cruise on a river, We're not too excited to see any salt water crocs or freshwater for that matter.

Cairns to Sydney

Day 1, Lunch Cruise through Sydney Harbor on a luxury catamaran (Jen is super excited for this one!).

Day 2, Wildlife Sydney (Basically a petting Zoo. Trish really wants to hold a Wombat. We'll for sure be able to hold Koalas, but Trish really wants to hold a Wombat.)

Day 3, Bike tour through Sydney: We'll see the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Harbour, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Darling Harbour, the Royal Botanic Gardens (including the

Flying Foxes), Hyde Park, the Anzac War Memorial, Chinatown, Sydney Tower, Parliament House, Queen Victoria Building, Museum of Contemporary Art, and more

Tuesday October 18th
Sydney to LA
LA to Home.

Getting Excited! T&J

Another Passenger

This is Mandy, TD and Bill’s daughter and Tricia and Jennifer’s aunt. I am preparing to venture on this Australian Adventure with them in a week and a half. It was quite an honor to be included on the trip, and I fully expect that there will be much laughter and lots of talking on this trip, as I am traveling with identical twins. But how does someone my age travel with just a carry-on for 16 days?

I consider myself the luckiest girl in the world: I had the best parents. They were energetic, funny, involved, and interested in others and in me. This trip, although initially planned for just my mother, has another passenger now.

My parents had been married over 57 years when my mom passed. My father got along OK, he was sad to lose mom, but found a little spring in his step for a few months. In May of this year he was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, and was immediately enrolled in Hospice. He pulled me aside one day and told me how he wanted his funeral to run, even down to what music to incorporate. I asked him what he wanted done with his remains. He seemed perplexed, then replied that he wanted some to go to his parents’ graves, then some to Stanford, Lake Tahoe, and his childhood home in Atherton, California. I asked him about going with mom to Australia, and he answered that he would like his remains to accompany her there as well. (They had a fabulous Australian cruise all planned several years ago, but my mother's health prevented them from traveling such a distance.)

Dad suffered for seven weeks and passed away peacefully in July. He has already gone to his California destinations and now he will accompany mom on a final excursion to Australia.

PS- if Tricia and Jennifer tell any stories about me while on the trip, don’t believe them.

The start of an adventure.

TD Imholt was what most people would consider a well traveled person. Her father was a Pan Am Pioneer and she was able to tag along to many exotic locales as a child and young woman because of his career as a pilot. In adulthood she traveled to Europe numerous times but she loved tropical locations the most and she had the skin for it! (Wish you would have passed that tanning gene our way Gram!) The place she wanted to travel to the most always seemed just out of reach.

We first heard about Gram's desire to see Australia when we were 10 or 11 years old. We would talk about it with her often. Asking her where she would go and what she would do. In 1993 when it was announced that Sydney would host the 2000 Summer Olympics we decided that should be the year that we would go and Gram would be coming with us. We would take in the sites and maybe catch an Olympic swimming or tennis event. We talked about going for years, but as fate would have it that trip was not to be because her health started to deteriorate and travel became difficult.

We continued to talk about Australia and seriously considered it again in 2007, we wanted to try to figure out a way to make it happen. For Mother's Day '07 we made Gram a vacation photo album of her fictional trip down under. The photos inside were all images of her doing fun and amazing things from Sydney to the Great Barrier Reef, from Alice Springs to Melbourne and all the spots in between. It didn't hurt that we photoshopped her head on some pretty nice bikini bodied women and placed her on a Sydney Harbor date with her crush, tennis pro Andy Roddick. She loved the album so much and couldn't contain her laughter. On the last page of the album we wrote a note that said we would take her to Australia in 2010.

Sadly, Gram passed away in May of 2010 having never traveled to Australia. Days after her passing we made it our goal to get Gram to Australia, so her ashes will be with us on this adventure. She will be with us on every tour, at every meal, every photo op. As we've been planning this journey we have felt Gram with us every step of the way. In some instances we have felt as if she was doing her best to set us on the right path.

In March our Aunt Mandy was on vacation in Cinque Terre, Italy. She was in a little cafe and struck up a conversation with an Australian woman from the Gold Coast who turned out to be a travel agent. (What are the chances?) Since that time we've been working with this travel agent, Murf, to build a trip we know Gram would have loved.

Gram presented herself again when we found out our hotel in Melbourne is very near the Rod Laver Arena, home of the Australian Open, an event she would wake up at 1 am in the morning to watch. Tennis was one of Gram's favorite hobbies. Many of our afternoons were spent talking and laughing with Gram at the kitchen table with tennis being played on the TV behind us. She especially enjoyed watching her beloved Andy Roddick. She thought he was a great player and not too bad in the looks department.

Gram will also be making a quick stop with us in New Zealand before we arrive in Melbourne, something we had not initially planned because we weren't going to have enough time to see New Zealand as a whole on this trip, but apparently Gram had other plans so now we have a short stop over there.

We are excited to get to Australia in the next couple of weeks and know Gram is looking down on us tickled pink about it as well. We know she will be with us in spirit the whole time and laughing all the way. She was an amazing woman and we were so lucky to have had her in our lives and been loved by her. We are honored to be able to fulfill this dream for her.

We will be doing our best to update this blog with photos of our activities while we are down under so you can see all the places we have been with Gram. Please check this blog often for updates.

Love you Gram, missing your "Hey, Babes!" from the other end of the phone.

- T&J

The slideshow below was played at Gram's memorial service, May 2010. Enjoy!
(Read by Andrew Imholt, Laughs by TD's friends and family)