Barossa to Adelaide (May 8-9)

We woke up, had a nice egg brekky and checked out of the caravan park before heading to the Barossa Farmer's Market, held every Saturday morning.  It was your typical farmer's market filled with stands selling everything from homemade jams, olive oil, chocolate, sausage, fresh produce, etc.  I bought a sausage stick that tasted exactly like Grandma and Grandpa's smoked sausage that I remember from the farm.  Lindsay, staying true to form, bought a few pieces of chocolate.  From there we left the Barossa Valley and had a nice two hour drive south into Adelaide.  Once in town, we parked the van by the park near downtown and went for a stroll.  It was a beautiful cloudless day, and people were out enjoying the weather.  We soon realized we were hungry so we stopped at a Belgian beer house for burger and a pint or two.  Later we visited the highly recommended (by my Dad) South Australia Museum with its impressive multi-story Aboriginal exhibit.  From there we wandered around the CBD before returning to the van and heading to the caravan park. We had a few hours to clean up and pack before being picked up by mom’s longtime penpal, Sue Medlow, and her husband Graham.  For those that don’t know the story of their connection, it is an impressive one.

Ages ago, when my mom was living in the rural farming town of Pierce, NE (pop 1200), she attended a one-room school house in the corner of a corn field a few miles out of town.  One day, in her fourth or fifth grade year, the teacher pulled out a map and told the kids to pick a location on the map and stick a pin in it.  My mom put hers in some random cattle station in the middle of nowhere Australia.  The children were then instructed to write a letter to a potential pen pal in the area they picked.  My mom wrote a letter, describing who she was and where she lived and sent it off addressed to the mayor of the town with a request to give it to another girl her same age.  Well, it turns out that this random station she sent it to had no mayor, so the letter ended up sitting on the desk of the postmaster responsible for that area.  Conveniently, this postmaster had a daughter roughly my mom’s age.  The rest, as they say, is history.  For the next 40 or so years they sent letters back and forth to the other side of the planet, not once meeting, let alone calling on the phone.  Then about 10 years ago, Sue and her family took a vacation to the States and made their way down to Tucson.  Since then Sue and my mom still write, occasionally call, and have now entered the 21^st century with an email or two.  On their recent month-long trip to Australia, my folks spent some time down in Adelaide visiting Sue and her family.

So the Medlows picked us up and took us on a little tour of coastal Adelaide.  We hung out on the pier and watched the sun go down over the ocean (and not rise over it) for the first time in a long time.  From there we drove over to Craig (the Medlow’s son) and his wife Belinda’s house for a bit of visiting and heaps of food.  Everyone was there: Craig, Belinda, Cameron (the grandbaby who just recently learned to walk), Sue, Graham, Grandma, Annette (the Medlow’s daugher) and Annette’s daughter Taylor.  We had a wonderful evening of catching up, talking about the footy (GO CROWS!), eating good food, and drinking even better wine.  The Rockford Black Shiraz may be the best bottle we have ever tasted.  It is experiences like these that are really the most meaningful part of travel.  After dinner, despite being slightly tipsy, Sue and Graham took us on a drive up in the hills to see the lights of Adelaide before dropping us off at the van.  We did a bit of speed packing and went to bed.

We were up early the next day as a result of our 9AM flight.  We dropped the van off at Apollo rental and the Medlows were kind enough to take us to the airport.  When we arrived they didn’t drop us off they way you would in the States.  Nope.  They parked, came in to the airport, went through security with us and sat down and had a coffee.  Remember when we used to be able to do that?  Our flight was called, thanked these wonderful people for everything, said our goodbyes, and took off toward the Red Center of Australia, Alice Springs.

P.S.  After dropping us off, the entire Medow clan was heading to a Crows game, the loser of which would be in last place in the AFL.  As we flew away, I was genuinely worried for what might happen if the Crows lost.  Once in Alice, we found out the Crows had a monster 4^th quarter and earned the victory.