Mt Worth roadtrip

Today Joey, Chooi-ee, Eddie and I went for a road trip to have a picnic and hike. Our destination was Mt Worth State Park which I randomly decided after an internet search.  

They arrived at my house in the morning and we headed out at about 10am. Since Eddie hadn't eaten breakfast we spontaneously decided to stop at an all day breakfast place. I always passed it on my way to Traralgon earlier this year and finally had the chance to visit.
It turned out to be a good decision and we were pleasantly surprised by this little cafe :) 

It was very clean and the staff were lovely. It felt very Australian and the prices were pretty good. I find that breakfast around the suburbs/city have become ridiculously expensive. After the rise of Masterchef, brunch places have gotten hella fancy and food has just gotten overpriced with smaller portions. It was nice to find a place like this where the servings were big and the food was hearty and simple. It just had a lot of flies so eventually we moved inside to eat. 

I enjoyed a coffee and hot jam donut. This is one of my little joys in life. 

After our pit stop we journeyed for another hour eastward and drove to find an awesome view along McDonald Track. I have no photo of the view, but it felt surreal to me. It was so picturesque that I thought it was like a painting backdrop. After a long journey on a gravel road, we finally made it to our destination and had a picnic. 

I made egg sandwiches and we had a perfect amount of food. We dozed off listening to music and Eddie whipped out his black book and started sketching. It was so chill and nice and the weather was perfect. Joey also insisted on eating fairy bread. 

After resting we packed our things up and started our hike. Eddy and I wanted to do the simple short walk, but Joey and Choo persuaded us to do the long 8.5km hike. We all thought that we'd make it back pretty easily...but oh boy, we were wrong. 

This was the beginning of our pain. 

The first third of the hike was really nice. There were heaps of fern branches creating like an arch over the trail. There were some areas which had built walkways/bridges and Eddie decided to jump down. His decision left him stung by a prickly plant. 

Joey being a creeper hahahaaaa!

We had to climb over lots of logs that had fallen over the path. It really wasn't safe...but we all managed to cross over and it was fun overcoming the obstacles. 

We walked for quite a while till we thought we were lost. When we finally reached a sign we thought we were almost done, but really we were less than half way through. We stopped for a rest and found a mini waterfall. 

Then suddenly the terrain changed and we were faced with really steep hills. Eddie and I were struggling big time. I remember as we were climbing, Eddie turned to me and compared us to the scene of the wicked witch of the waste and granny Sophie climbing up the stairs in Howl's moving castle. There was no more shady plants and we were melting under the sun.
It was continuous steep hills which none of us expected, but it was a good experience and I was glad we completed it in the end. We were expecting an awesome view, but unfortunately there wasn't ANY T^T! Hence Choo made a short video called Mount Not Worth It hahaha

We completed the hike and headed home and I got lost and stressed driving because the sign posts were very unhelpful and the internet connection sucks when your in rural places. We eventually got back to the main freeway and bought some Viet food for dinner. 

The next day I decided to test out my new water colour pen by painting this photo. 

It was kind of hard to control the fine detail because I bought the medium size. But I was really happy with the convenience of the brush. It's hard to control water colour, but I've always liked it. 

I'm surprised that we've never gone hiking together before. It was a really, really great day and I'm looking forward to planning the next trip :)