off-roading adventure

our most recent adventure this weekend definitely warrants a place on this blog. we decided to really test the limits of our new 4wd and head up the coast to a spot where the paved road ends and the only way to continue is by traversing a great stretch of sand tracks and dunes, and drive along the beach in some places! we unfortunately forgot our camera but the photos here are most likely the same places we went. i would have loved to have more, though. the spot where our offroading adventure began was just a few miles outside of the town of lancelin, about 2 1/2 hours north of perth. the first area we got to was filled with sand dunes and was a very popular spot for dirt bike riders to practice their death-defying stunts. again, wish i had a picture of this - it was so cool. the dunes a little further down were reserved for sandboarding. again, i had never really seen this before, but it reminded me of snowboarding except on sand. we also saw others just purely sledding down the dunes. i guess that would be what people do in winter since there's no snow! as the 4wd trail continued, there was less dirt bike traffic (and traffic in general, since only 4wd's can go past all of that - yeah!). keep in mind, we only had a rough map of the trails and with so many of them winding in and out of one another, we quickly gave up hope of following the map and just decided to follow our noses instead. we made our way to the beach where we had to maneuver our way through some pretty soft sand (we didn't get bogged though) and were able to park and go for a long walk along the deserted beach. even for it being winter here, we actually had really nice weather on saturday, with plenty of sunshine. on our way back just before the sun set (around 5:30pm!) we were able to see about 6 wallabies, which i initially mistook for kangaroos until we then saw 3-4 kangaroos alongside them and i could see that the wallabies were slightly shorter and chubbier. we also saw an emu - for those of you not familiar with these, it looks sort of like an ostrich. i was amazed how close we could get to these animals without them really running off. the kangaroos and wallabies would hop across the road, then just stop and stare at us for a while! i'm used to the deer in northern minnesota, where you only catch their little white tails jumping off into the woods! anyway, that pretty much sums up the little adventure. we are very happy with the performance of our little x trail. she is going to serve our off-roading needs just fine!