The Blue Mountains National Park is located about 90 minutes by car (assuming Parramatta road isn’t to backed up and road construction on highway is light) due west from Sydney. All you have to do is make it to the Great Western Highway. Or if you don’t like driving or lack a car or bus ticket, you can grab a train in Sydney and take it. It is suppose to take about 60 minutes. I know I will be heading back up there to do more hiking and the train is the way I’ll go.
Anyway, back to this journey- Lisa, Alexandra, Eric and I headed out there last Thursday to get out of the city and see some nature. Lisa has some great co-workers and they recommended called Echoes Boutique Hotel and Restaurant. The Hotel had amazing views that you will see from pictures later and the restaurant’s signature Double Roasted Barbary Duck was excellent when we had dinner there on Thursday. Also desert of the deconstructed Apple pie and the Chocolate were good. In town there is a K-Mart, bottle shop, and lots of restaurants.
The Blue Mountains National Park offers a host of activities including, but not limited to horseback riding, hiking, cave exploring (a little drive), golf, biking (both kinds), scenic railway and sky cable cars, rock climbing. When we arrive we were a little slow moving, but walked about 10 minutes and we were at the lookout for the Three Sisters. The sisters are a series of sandstone rock formations that has an Aborigine tale associated with their creation. Actually, there are several tales. The one I heard around 15 years ago was different than the 
one that the free tourist guide book one had; which again was different than another I had read. In the end, all the tales have a shaman turning the sisters into stone.
Most of Sydney is built on and sometimes with Sandstone and it is beautiful to look at in its raw forms in the Blue Mountains. There are over 140 km of hiking trails. One of Lisa’s co-workers said that even the medium can have some dangerous crossings and the like. After viewing the sisters, we wanted to see some waterfalls, so we headed to Leura Cascades and falls. You can get there from Echo point via a trail, or hop in a motor vehicle and park at the park and walk down into what felt like a rain forest. I say felt like, because there is most likely some geographic term for the area we where in that precludes using the name rain forest, but I will let you know it smelled and felt like life. In the Blue Mountains, you can feel the magic, if you are willing.
Morning from the back yard of the hotel outside our bedrooms:
Portraits before dinner:
