Mother of All Trips has separate tours offspring

In the coming months, I will be setting up separate blogs for Tasmania, Australia, Bay of Islands and New Zealand. Hopefully, if I do it right, each blog will have a separate link and audience (family, friends and those attending the paticular OAT tour portion). I will also set up another blog for "The Baja Boys" upon my return from Baja, sometime after July 6th.

Trip Status

We are currently staying at the Millbrook Resort and Spa and golf course (now frozen) near Queenstown in the southwestern portion of the south New Zealand island. We toured the Millford Sound yesterday on a boat. The day was sunny and the scenery was spectacular. There aren't many days like the one we had yesterday and feel very fortunate to have sunny weather, even though the daytime temperature is in the low forties. There was a great deal of frost on the ground this morning at Millbrook and I took many pictures of the grounds and snow on the local mountains.

There was an indoor, heated 25 meter pool at the resort and I swam 2000 meters for only the third time in the pool while on vacation. I am really out of shape and look forward to my daily workouts when I return to the USA.

I currently have taken over 1200 digital pictures and have over four hours of video clips to eventually review, edit and post. I will set up four new blogs to post my pictures and videos. Two will be for the Tasmanian pre-trip and Australian trips and for those who were on those tours and the other two will be for the Bay of Islands and New Zealand portions and for those who were on those trips.

It has been one hell of a trip and it just keeps getting better.

Trip Status

After signing in at the Adelaide Public Library on May 3rd, we have completed one-third of our Australian oddesey, namely Hobart and Salmanca street, Fort Arthur, Chudley Honey Store, Cradle Mountain and long walk around Dove Lake, and the city of Launceston, Catarac walk, foot bridge and south Esk/Tamur river cruise in the island state of Tasmania.

We have been to Melbourne, its old jail, spelled gaol, Botanical Gardens, and indigenous museum (the Aussies treated the aboriginees worst than the US treated the American Indian). The National Gallery was spectacular.

We have completed a tour of the natural and cultural history museums and art museums in Adelaide and plan on taking the city tram to Glenelg (spelled the same backwards) to view the sunset and for dinner tonight.

It would appear that it will take some time from now before I can start downloading my trip videos and pictures. So will sign off.....

We are on our Way

Chuck travelled from Perth and met up with Marilyn and Tom and Nancy Sommers in Melbourne to begin a six-week Overseas Adventure Travel tour of Tasmania, Australia, and New Zealand, north and south island.

The first two nights will be spent in Hobart, Tasmania. The first day will visit Salmanca street, have dinner in a pub on Friday night, then visit the Saturday market and the historic Fort Arthur prison colony.

This blog will be updated periodically and, if possible, digital pictures and videos will be added along the way assuming a computer can be found that can play DVD's and has a memory stick drive. So far the first two days have been fabulous.

This is a picture of Chuck and Marilyn Milam on an OAT trip to Costa Rica in 2007. Beginning on April 25, 2008 the Milams are beginning a six-week trip that will begin in Hobart, Tasmania for a week. This is a pre-trip portion of the Ultimate Australia trip that will tour Australia thru May 14, 2008. The next portion of the trip will take place in Lake Rotorua in north New Zealand where we will stay at a B&B and explore that part of NZ. The full New Zealand portion of the Overseas Adventure Travel trip will begin on May 20th and will end in Christchurch, where we will depart on June 5th and return to Los Angeles on the same day.