Tasmania: Day 2: Hastings Cave, Dover

After a good night's sleep in our hotel in Hobart, we woke up early on the 22nd to go pick up our caravan. I have to say, the van was great! I loved touring like that. It was the perfect way to explore and do sightseeing all over, yet was so easy and convenient. Plus, I loved that it meant camping at night, which is always relaxing. It really was the perfect balance between adventure and relaxation. Steve did an awesome job driving it too!

After we got the van, we drove to Dover (about an hour outside Hobart) and checked into our first caravan park. It was right by a beach and was really clean and well kept. Plus, the very best thing...it smelled like Christmas trees everywhere! There were pine trees all around our site!

The view from the caravan park. It was a beautiful hot day on our second day, with temps reaching 27 degrees. We really lucked out with the weather!

Once we were checked in, we made some lunch (we ate a lot of soup heated in the microwave!) and decided to drive to Hastings Cave and Thermal Springs to do a tour of the very large cave. The walk to the cave was very pretty through beautiful rain forest. The contrasts in forest in Tasmania was just amazing. It seemed to be constantly changing from one place to the next.

The cave was incredible! I wasn't sure what to expect but I was shocked by the size and detail of it! Our tour guide was great and had lots of info for us as we went though. It was really cool to see! We toured just one of the many caves there. There are several caves off the one that they use for tours but they aren't as easy to get through and require special cave climbing equipment. This cave had 240 steps laid out nicely for our touring pleasure.

Can you tell that I sunburned my nose? I look a bit like Rudolf! All in the name of Christmas cheer;)

Steve in the thermal springs pool at Hastings Cave. Surprisingly, not as warm as I expected it to be but then again, I'm always cold!

We headed back to campsite and Steve was brave enough to take a dip in the ocean by our campsite...

...I didn't go much deeper than this the whole time we were in Tasmania. The water was freezing! I'm talking Atlantic ocean, your feet actually hurt when they touch the water cold. I'm not used to that anymore!

Even some of the beaches felt like Canadian beaches.

It was really fun settling into our caravan. I slept SO well in there! It was so snugly and peaceful. We decorated it with Christmas lights to make it feel like the holidays:)

Around the campground at Dover...

And what holiday would be complete without a baby bird rescue? Steve found this little guy near our campsite and as fate would have it, it turned out that the owner of the campground used to raise and sell birds and his daughter rescues birds. So, she gladly took it off Steve's hands with the plan to care for it until it was bigger. Hopefully, it's still doing well. He was a noisy little thing! Steve was so sweet with it:)

There were also bunnies running around the campground, which was cute.

Day 2...a full but relaxing day!
Stay tuned for more:)