When LeBeaus depart at o’dark thirty while on vacation, it better be for something awesome, and… it was. We checked out of our little hotel in Strahan this morning with our tour group after a quick breakfast in town, and we hit the road. It was cold and sprinkling just a little this morning (nothing compared to yesterday’s gloom!), but it had mostly cleared up by the time we drove the 1.5 hours to Cradle Mountain National Park. Cradle Mountain NP is known for having lots of wildlife and jagged dolerite peaks, ancient rainforests, alpine moorlands, and glacial lakes. We were super excited about the wildlife spotting options.

Hiking Heaven (??) or Hell??

Today’s big event was time for hiking in Cradle Mountain National Park, situated in the heart of the Tasmanian Wilderness Heritage Area. There are multiple hiking options in the park with a wide range of lengths and difficulty. We decided on a 4 mile moderate difficulty hike that took us about 2.5 hours. This route included multiple summits, varied terrain, and a wide variety of beautiful landscapes. The pictures below, while nice, do not do justice to the beauty of this area. This was a great hike, at times cold, windy and exhausting, but well worth the effort.

We were so thrilled to see a bunch of wild wombats grazing in the fields today, but sadly we did not see any Tasmanian devils, which also roam free in this park.

Sheffield: The Town of Murals

After we left Cradle Mountain NP, our tour group made a stop at a cute little town called Sheffield. According to our guide, several years ago this town came together to try to come up with a plan to increase tourism and get some of the people heading to nearby Cradle Mountain National Park to stop in their town. The result was the “mural plan”, and they commissioned a bunch of large murals around the town, and then started having contests for local artists to place murals around town. The result was quite popular, and they even have a mural festival every year and add to their collection. It was really cute!

I Scream, You Scream…

Our last stop before the hotel today was a Tasmanian ice creamery called Van Diemens Land Creamery. According to our guide, they serve the BEST ice cream in Tasmania, so we had to put this to the test. We tour guests all agreed – very tasty!

Launceston

Tonight’s tour stop was the town of Launceston (pop. 91,000), which feels pretty huge after tiny Strahan. Our hotel has an attached pub and cafe, so most of the tour group went to dinner together tonight, which was lots of fun. Looking forward to more Tassie fun tomorrow!

Thanks for adventuring with us!