Alright, I'm back to trying to catch up again. This trip was taken in January and it is March. So I'm a little behind...
Paul and Amber invited us to join them on a trip to visit Paul's Uncle Warren in Parkes. It was the first weekend of the new year and Parkes is "famous" for its Elvis Festival. We had been meaning to head out that way to see "The Dish", and free lodging is always welcome -> so we joined them. (Just kidding, guys!! We LOVE hanging with the Brenners!)
I drove the first half, getting us out of Sydney proper. Then, since he knew where he was going and I didn't, Paul took over. Thankfully, being another employee of the company, he is insured on our car as well. He trekked us all over the planet, making a quick stop in Bathurst, home of the Bathurst 1000 auto race. It is the most famous auto race in Australia, like a mini-Indy 500, only obviously much longer and using "stock" cars. What I didn't know, until we pulled onto the track (you read that right) is that a good portion of the track is used as normal roads the other 364 days of the year. People's driveways come out onto the track! We did a lap (stupid speed limits) and the kept on treckkin'.
We then stopped in Forbes, the other large-ish town in that part of New South Wales. It has a couple of really cool looking older churches and some interesting "old-timey" architecture. Actually, it resembled any small town in the Midwest (being built around the same time).
From there, we finally made it to Parkes. If we had gone straight, the drive would have been around 4.5 hours, but it took us most of the day with the side trips. Still, we made it right on time to welcome in the "Elvis Train". Every year the festival has a special train that comes out from Sydney (with regular passengers as well) loaded with people coming out for the festival... and lots of people dressed like the king and Priscilla. What a strange sight! 1000s of miles from Graceland, in another country altogether, and off the train walk a bunch of people straight out of Memphis during the heyday of Elvis! Little did I know. Wait until tomorrow, Jon!
Warren and his wife have a beautiful house at the top of the hill overlooking Parkes. They were very gracious hosts and told us a lot about the history of the area. Paul took us by some of his old family homes that they lived in before moving to Sydney.
Saturday morning we headed out early to get a good spot for the parade. Warren comes through again! They are part owners of the building that Warren's auto parts store is located in, and the building has a second floor balcony overlooking the main street for the parade. If I had been forced down on the street with the masses I might have gone insane. Instead we had a bird's eye view for the fun.
After the parade Paul, Amber and the two of us got back in the car and drove 30 minutes out to The Dish - a radio telescope that searches the heavens for unusual activity. It has been in use for over 50 years and is so sought after by scientists studying the cosmos a special commission has to delegate time and tell others they will have to wait. The Dish was also used to receive transmissions back from the Apollo moon missions and relay those transmissions back to mission control in Houston. When the moon was on the other side of the Earth, Houston could not receive transmissions because the Earth was in the way! We saw a couple of movies about The Dish, astronomy and a cool 3-D "mars mission". We had lunch in their little cafeteria (good food) all the while watching the dish rotate and move towards whatever celestial object they were supposed to be observing.
Next Paul, Clarice and I joined Warren for 9 holes of golf. Clarice and I had not played in about 10 months and boy did it show! For every good shot we hit a dozen junky ones. Warren, however, was lights out playing what he told us was his best 9 ever. Yeah, right! Ringer!!!
After dinner, Paul, Amber, Clarice and I decided to head back into town and see what Elvis was up to that night. A lot. Every pup we walked into (or even just outside of) was blasting Elvis with people packed in like sardines. At one place they had karaoke and Amber and Clarice just HAD to sing. They picked Sweet Home Alabama even though they only really knew the chorus. Still, people sang along and no one booed. They did pretty good!
Sunday we got up early again (so much for resting on vacations...) and attended the Elvis Gospel Celebration for Sunday morning church. It was hilarious while at the same time quite an interesting was to worship God. Elvis recorded a lot of gospel music - I never knew how much. A professional Elvis impersonator performed, a local preacher spoke, local groups sang other Elvis tracks, and over 2000 people packed the undercover Big W (like Wal-Mart) parking lot. Scratch "Giant Elvis Church Service" off my list of things to do before I die!
The drive home was long, but we took a scenic route through the Blue Mountains and got to see some beautiful views. We may never make it back to Parkes, but if we were only going to go once, we picked the perfect weekend!
No comments:
Post a Comment