Orange, New South Wales, Australia - 10th January 2008
By: sararingham
Hello! Welcome to my blog! My name is Leo Lion and I'm not going to be traveling like my brothers Jimbo Elephant and Shaggy Bear straight away but I'd like to travel on one of the Toyvoyager Trails eventually.
My mom will be taking me to South Korea and America with her in a few weeks time and I hope to see the snow when I'm up there. It's very hot here, but I'd like to see what the cold is like too, I've heard I'll like it - but I also like the heat a lot, so I don't know how much I'll really like it, but we'll see I'm happy to try anything and everything. :-)
Here's a picture of me:
My mom will be sending me to different hosts after I come back to Australia in mid-March so I hope to see the world even more than I'm going to, see all the oceans, see real lions and wow, I'm just very excited! I'll update when I have more pictures later on. :-)
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Posted Jan 10, 2008, 11:20 am Last edited Jun 8, 2008, 5:00 pm by sararingham
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Orange, New South Wales, Australia - 22nd January 2008
By: sararingham
Today I met my first toyvoyager that will be traveling with me to America and South Korea. His name is Benni... here's a group picture of me, him and Super Grover who will be leaving to Austria later this week, exciting but I'm sad to see him go, he's been a good mate while he's been here.
Mom says I'll be traveling around Australia a bit when I come back from my holidays in America, and maybe more in a while after that. I'm excited to see Australia though - I haven't seen the beaches or any native wildlife yet sadly, but maybe if I'm lucky I'll be able to with my other little toyvoyager friends before we go up to America. :-) We can only hope... maybe I'll get another voyager friend tomorrow, hopefully! It's so exciting!
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Posted Jan 21, 2008, 4:09 pm Last edited Jun 8, 2008, 5:00 pm by sararingham
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Incheon (Seoul), South Korea - 5th February 2008
By: sararingham
I got to visit South Korea in the mean time, how cool is that? I'm in America now and it's sure cold but mom told me that I'd be visiting here again when I go back to Australia. I'll be back off on my journey in only a short time after I arrive. No time to sleep off my jet lag, hey traveling is fun though so I don't mind so much!
This is a photo driving to Bathurst which is 45 minutes out of Orange. It was around 1am when this photo was taken, but it was sure dark and tiring to be awake so late at night!
As you can see it was REALLY rainy and cold in Sydney when we left, the second photo is the actual plane I was traveling on. Thankfully I had other TV's to keep me company, I was with Benni, Cronus/tv], Fish, Benson and Kooka three others that traveled along with us as well! Kooka was a new addition from the Sydney Airport! He was too cute to pass up so we got him and gave him a bit of traveling! He seems to enjoy as much as we all do!
First thing we did when we got to South Korea was called Daniel, isn't this pay phone weird? It even had a keyboard! How strange is that!
I had a look out the window, and it looks like the plane we rode in on, but it wasn't, this plane was off to Singapore in the morning!
We all shared a drink of Pepsi too on the stay in the terminal. Then we found somewhere to lay down and sleep for a bit... but of course we took a few photos prior to that, here are some random photos from around the airport...
We sat down again for a rest, this is a HUGE airport, then we finally found somewhere to sleep! All the TV's and I slept in a bag but Sara slept with us to keep us safe!...
Goodnight! :-)
During the daytime we took some more photos of what was around the airport, and we couldn't see much, but it still was pretty scenic since none of us have ever been to Korea let alone Asia! :-)
...almost time to go now...
...our flight was delayed about an hour as the other plane hadn't come in from Seattle yet. When it go there it was only 30 minutes and we were stepping back on the plane for another shorter flight of only 9 hours! :-) We landed in Seattle at 1130am and met up with mom's family at around 1pm after getting through immigration and customs. :-)
When we got there we met up with [tv]Charity Bear who is from Russia, she was in a bag for a few days before Sara arrived, she looked very happy to be out of there!
Afterwards we got to meet the resident cats, Jethro (the one in the top photo) and Ellie the one that was sniffing us. They're very nice! and surprisingly not brother and sister, they were born a day after each other! How strange is that?
We all helped Sara by making a pavlova for her family, it was really really yummy!
Afterwards we had a look outside, it was very cold! Sara said there's been avalanches in the mountains!
Now it was about time to just sit down and rest for the day I'm quite jet lagged but I'm happy to be able to rest for a few days!
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Posted Feb 4, 2008, 10:27 pm Last edited Feb 20, 2008, 6:27 pm by sararingham
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Kirkland, Washington , United States - 7th February 2008
By: sararingham
I have been pretty busy here, although sadly not too many photos as of the moment. Sara keeps forgetting her camera or just not in the right place or right time to take photos of all of us, but she tries her best. :-)
On Thursday we got to visit with Sara's sister, Julie. She's got 4 kids, and here's a picture of all of us with Alissa...
Alissa is 6 years old and she absolutely fell in love with all of us... we had an extremely busy day but in the morning I got to visit a bit with Tank a "tuxedo manx cat" which means it's tail is very short... not docked, but just born very short... isn't he cool looking?
Granted, not really the best photo of him... but he was scared of some of the dogs that were over for a few hours. I was a bit scared too though, they were SO much bigger than all of us and they were all very rowdy! But I did meet one nice pup, his name is Scooter...
He's a 9 week old "hot dog" dog, isn't he cute? He loves to cuddle with anyone and everyone and seriously, could not hurt a fly. So I was more than happy to spend some time with him... :-) We we're busy most of the day though so not much else was photographed plus it was really yucky outside, but I'm going back next week so hopefully I'll get some better photos then!
We went shopping on Friday and got some Sockeye Salmon, it was SO yummy! Sara said bears that are a bit bigger than me love to go fishing and catch these when they're running upstream. Thankfully the bears aren't in the area, or at least where I live... although we do get possums and raccoons Sara says... hopefully we'll be able to see some while I'm here maybe. I've seen some squirrels, but they were moving so fast I couldn't get a photo of them...
Then today we went to a hobby show expo thing where I saw a lot of model planes flying and even go-cart racing with really small kids, it's amazing how fast they were going, but it was really cold so we went home... maybe later we'll go to Lake Tye... Sara has been meaning to get some photos and take us down there with her but it's just been so icky outside... but there are hopefully some plans to go to Leavenworth and maybe the San Juan Islands... Leavenworth is a small German tourist town on the other side of the mountains, hopefully we'll go there - it'll be very homey I'm sure. :-)
I'll update again soon! Sorry it took me so long I've just been so tired, all these dark rainy days make it so hard to want to do anything much! Maybe we'll get some snow! :-)
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Posted Feb 11, 2008, 7:30 am Last edited Feb 11, 2008, 7:07 pm by Isobel&Neil
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Monroe, Washington, United States - 9th February 2008
By: sararingham
Hey! Straight after I updated yesterday Sara took me, Charity Bear, Cronus and Benni for a little walk. We went down the street and visited Lake Tye since it was actually cloudy but not raining so we took some advantage of it... first stop off we made was to have a bit of fun at the park... but sadly it was all closed off, this shows you how much rain we've been having lately... isn't it shocking?
... but thankfully I was able to swing on the swings a little bit, too bad they're so big for me, but I did my best... you know, it's not the size that counts. :-)
... and then we finally got to Lake Tye... there actually were a few people there, but we did our best we still had a lot of fun but there sure was a big chilly wind that seemed to go straight through you...
... this is obviously straight facing the lake, now I turn around... and this is what I see...
... although it's cloudy isn't it just SO pretty? Who would know I would get much closer to them today!... I'll update that a little bit later though!...
These were some of the ducks at the lake, they were all really close to each other while they were swimming no matter what... maybe they were family, Sara told me it looks like there are three males, but maybe one female? So probably a family of ducks! How cute!
Well I'll update again soon there are a lot of pictures, we visited Wallace Falls in Gold Bar today! :-)
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Posted Feb 11, 2008, 7:26 am
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Gold Bar, Washington, United States - 10th February 2008
By: sararingham
Hey again! So today we took a hike up to Wallace Falls, in Gold Bar, Washington which is just a neighboring town to Monroe, Washington... maybe a 15 minute drive up to the Wallace Falls State Park. It was very pretty and pretty cold initially but it quickly warmed up once we started walking...
This is a view from the very beginning of the trail, isn't it beautiful? It's so cloudy and gross looking but it's still gorgeous, it's got a lot of snow and had a very cold wind coming down from the mountains... but it wasn't too bad after a bit of uphill walking. :-)
Here's the river that comes off of the many falls that are around where we were walking. We walked the wrong direction for a while, but we finally found our way... it was pretty crazy!
Here I am next to the water, isn't it nice looking? Oh but it also looks SO cold!
... and here I am next to another set of falls, much smaller but it sure was nice to look at all the surroundings!
Now this is the direction we went the wrong way for a while - this hill got extremely steep and very hard to climb. Only at the top was when everyone realised we were going the wrong direction... Oops. :-)
Here are the rest of the photos from the trip up and back down. We didn't fully make it, because of a past injury Sara had we had to turn back early, didn't help she sprained her ankle and bruised the bottom of her feet pretty good... but saying that, we have plans to do it again - and make it to the top this time. It's a 2.7 mile walk up to the top of the falls. We'll be doing it again hopefully before we go back to Australia! :-) So you'll see this all again hopefully soon!...
On the way home we stopped and got some dinner at a BBQ Bus in a Reptile Zoo car park. It was really yummy, and pretty unique! :-)
There was another bus that was right next to it that had tables to actually eat your food in... very cool! I really enjoyed it and the food was awesome!
... Almost home again, we stopped at a river right near where we live for the time being in Monroe, it was very cold and getting dark... the water looks like it was freezing, and again, a cold breeze, but even colder than earlier!...
The last photo is of a railroad track that used to be there a few years ago but they tore it down because people were getting injured on it... cool photos though, we didn't stay long because it was freezing we finally went back home and rested our feet!
No plans as of yet for more, but a bit of rest this week and back off to Kirkland. Expect another post soon! I hope you're doing well! Talk soon!
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Posted Feb 11, 2008, 7:16 am Last edited Feb 20, 2008, 6:23 pm by sararingham
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Kirkland, Washington, United States - 13th February 2008
By: sararingham
Hey! Went went again to Kirkland yesterday, although sadly didn't get many photos. We just bought up for Valentines Day, Sara says while she isn't with Daniel she's making light of the situation and got a few presents for him for when she goes back to Australia. How cute! :-)
So all of us ran errands with her around town, here's a picture of me next to the little area where all the shops are in an area of Kirkland called Kingsgate.
Sara says she knows this area very well, because if you look behind all the stores and you could see through the trees she lived in apartments behind there for a few years before moving to Australia. She told a bit about living in this area, and how it's extremely expensive to live there! Thankfully I don't have to pay bills or rent, that doesn't sound like fun at all!
We went and had teriyaki for lunch and it was REALLY yummy! No photos as Sara probably would have gotten some dirty looks taking photos when she was the only one in there with us... but later on we got back home to Monroe and got to see a very pretty sunset!
...the clouds are pink, Sara always says... "Pink sky at night, sailors delight... pink sky in the morning sailors warning" meaning if there's a pink sky at night - it'll be a nice day tomorrow, and in the morning means storms... so I guess it'll be a nice day tomorrow! It's Valentines Day tomorrow, I wonder what that will bring to us? :-) We shall see!
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Posted Feb 14, 2008, 6:55 pm Last edited Feb 15, 2008, 4:42 am by sararingham
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Monroe, Washington, United States - 15th February 2008
By: sararingham
Hey! It was a pretty busy day today, didn't get too many photos, but none the less it was still fun, more fun ahead for tomorrow I've been told... :-) But we'll go into that a bit later. :-)
You know I told you that we bought a heap of stuff for Daniel? Well here's what's on the list to come back home to Australia with us, not much as of yet, but I'm sure the pile will just keep growing...
There's a lot more kool-aid than what's shown but we all helped pick out what we thought Daniel would like for his very delayed Valentines Day he's going to have... yummy candies! :-)
... and here's me with the candies we all got today, each of us got a little lollypop to suck on, even though it's almost as big as me, I guess that means it'll last longer. :-)
Well tomorrow we're off to Redmond (Famous for being the home of Microsoft) and Bellevue maybe... :-) Maybe we can see a bit more.. then probably Saturday will be something exciting! Lots more pictures to come! :-)
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Posted Feb 15, 2008, 5:55 am
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Snoqualmie Falls, Washington, United States - 16th February 2008
By: sararingham
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Posted Feb 20, 2008, 6:14 pm Last edited Feb 20, 2008, 6:19 pm by sararingham
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Leavenworth, Washington, United States - 17th February 2008
By: sararingham
So Sunday was the big day, we went through the Cascade Mountains and all that snow and got to see the Bavarian town called Leavenworth...
First stop, Lake Wenatchee for a family picture... that was a bit broken up and sadly no real good photos turned out (Sara said anyways) but she sure had a good slip in the snow and was bleeding a lot so we didn't stay too long, here's a photo of me at Lake Wenatchee.. isn't it pretty?
As you can see in this photo, 95% of the lake was actually frozen over. Sara's brother Todd was out sitting on the lake for a while before the family photos had started. Me and the other toyvoyagers just sat in the snow and waited patiently (as patiently as you could) for our photo shoot to have happen. Then we were put back in the backpack where it was SO much warmer... I think Sara told it it was 23'F outside where we were sitting... brrr!
Next stop was just a little mountain on the side of the road, I think it looks pretty cool. Sara didn't stay out with us very long though since we were only half way to Leavenworth - still a ways to drive, and a lot more snow to get through before we get there!
...and finally we are in Leavenworth... most of the time we were here we just visited shops and looked at all the interesting things they had, there was so much to look at - we spent a few hours walking through the main parts of the town... here are some of the photos Sara took...
By the time it we were done it was almost time to head home. We had a late lunch at a restaurant called King Lear's. Sara had a German sausage and her dad had a Bavarian Bratwurst... they were really yummy they said... the other two had just a hamburger and soup, so nothing really fancy for being in a little American German town... hehe. :-)
On the way home we stopped at a little shop before we got fully into the Cascades called The Alps, and this is a view from the shops... there was SO much snow, no wonder they've been having avalanches... there were a lot of road signs fully covered by snow... that's a LOT!
Well more updating later... we still one big day to go after updating Friday (when Sara gets the photos off of her dad hopefully tonight)....
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Posted Feb 20, 2008, 7:17 pm
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Orcas Island, Washington, United States - 18th February 2008
By: sararingham
Hey... Monday was another HUGE day for all of us... we woke up at 6am and were on the road to Anacortes by 630am. No stops along the way we had to make a ferry by 830am. When we got there one ferry had just left to another route so we just missed a picture opportunity, little did we know how many picture opportunities we were heading towards...
This is me standing way back from a ferry dock. We docked at a dock right next to this one... but this is the one the ferry took off from when we arrived there... there wasn't too long of a wait and our ferry arrived...
That's the view we had from the car waiting to drive onto the ferry, they're HUGE! Sara says there Washington States biggest attraction! It was very exciting to be on something so huge, and so nice!
The moment the ferry took off from Anacortes Sara took all of us outside to the front of the ferry, it was REALLY windy, so windy when Sara took the lens cap off of her camera it blew out of her hand and onto her bag... thankfully it didn't blow into the cold ocean, that'd be no good! So we didn't get a lot of outside photos for fear of loosing us... here I am...
...and here I am in front of the front of the ferry, the captain of the ship looked at Sara a bit funny when she saw her holding us up for some photos, hehe... this ferry's name was the Kaleetan. :-)
Here's some pictures Sara took from the ferry - it was around an hour ride until we arrived at the dock in Orcas Island...
...and now we have arrived at Orcas Island... how exciting! Time to go to the car as were ready to start docking on the island...
First things first... time to get some breakfast, it's now 930am and we had a nice breakfast at a place called the Sunflower Cafe. It was yummy now were on our way to Mount Constitution... a very long and winding road later we were almost there...
... another 10 minutes of winding roads and we were there... besides a steep hike up a snow filled hill, it wasn't easy for Sara to get up from the fall she had had the day before, but we made it up, very slowly but none the less... and wait for it, these pictures are gorgeous!
Now that we're up at the top of the hill it's time to climb up this tower... it was around 300 feet tall in itself and the mountain is around 2500 feet from sea level, so it's the highest point in the San Juan Islands so we got to see everything, this is the view of the ground from the top of the tower...
...and here I am at the top, looking out over the islands...
In the first photo I'm looking out over islands and you can see Mount Baker in the background, one of the three volcanos in Washington state... and the next photo is a photo looking over part of Canada... :-)
Here are the other photos that Sara took at the top of the tower... not all of them, but some of them... :-) Enjoy!
It really was absolutely gorgeous... well with 40 minutes to spare after driving time we headed back to the ferry dock for our 115pm ferry... we got there, and it was full! Dang! The next ferry was 335pm. We had a long wait in the ferry line, instead we went and got some souvenirs and some postcards, and had some lunch at the ferry dock. Yummy!
Finally 3pm rolls around and we're ready to board the ferry to go back home... bye bye Orcas Island... here are some more photos on the way home from Orcas Island...
Well that was a BIG day for all of us... the next day was pretty lazy and slow but that wasn't a bad thing... not much planned as of yet, but on Thursday we're going to Kirkland again to see Sara's family... :-) I hope you enjoyed what you saw of my busy last few days! It was very exciting! I had lots of fun!
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Posted Feb 20, 2008, 11:18 pm
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Monroe, Washington, United States - 26th February 2008
By: sararingham
Hey! I've been so lazy lately, since we did so much running around and a lot of sight seeing last week, Sara, me and the rest of the toyvoyagers have just been lounging around the house not doing too much... it's not too bad though - I don't mind it so much! :-)
But saying that... today we got a new visitor! How exciting! :-)
Her name is Mel how exciting to meet a little koala bear, who would have known we would meet her in Washington?
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Posted Feb 25, 2008, 11:40 pm
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Monroe, Washington, United States - 29th February 2008
By: sararingham
I have been slow to update - since it's coming closer to the time were heading back to Australia there's much less going on... but today, we made a 7 layer cookie thing, it looks really yummy! We all helped as much as we could in the kitchen with Sara, but mostly we watched...
First the one cube of butter needed to be chopped up and put in...
We melted all the butter in the oven at 325'F until all the butter was melted and we then sprinkled graham cracker crumbs all over the top of it... yummy!
...and even more graham cracker crumbs!...
Then it was about time to pour the sweet condensed milk over the top...
All done... it's starting to look so yummy... but looks even more yummy very soon! :-)
Then we sprinkled the chocolate chips, and coconut over the top... mmm!
Then sprinkled walnuts over 2/3 of it, because Sara's brother doesn't like nuts, oh well, looks so yummy already though!
...22-25 minutes later...
Out of the oven, still very hot but looks SO yummy! This is a desert tonight after dinner... yum yum yummy! Sara said she wanted to give everyone the recipe too incase they wanted to make it too... so here it is:
SEVEN LAYER MAGIC COOKIE BARS
1/2 c. butter
1 1/2 c. graham cracker crumbs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 pkg. semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 pkg. (6 oz.) butterscotch chips
1 1/3 c. flaked coconut
1 c. chopped nuts
Preheat oven to 350 degrees (325 degrees for glass dish). In a 13 x 9 inch baking pan melt butter in oven. Sprinkle crumbs over it. Mix together and press into pan. Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over crumbs. Top evenly with remaining ingredients. Press down firmly. Bake 25-30 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool before cutting.
That's not all we did, because we're leaving soon we helped Sara put together her bags for leaving, she reorganizes them a lot, so we we're seeing how everything fit, we'll be on the carry on so we won't be like these other poor saps...
...not sure if you can see, but under Cronus foot kind of is a stuffed toy, a few actually, and the big eye you see is a scarecrow wind sock that Sara got, isn't it cool? This is a huge vaccum seal bag that Sara puts everything in to fit it a lot better than what she'd normally be able to fit...
After all that was done we got a new sitting place for a little bit of time while we're not doing anything... aren't we all just so cute? :-)
Yesterday was our last day in Kirkland, it was all sad goodbyes and everything, but we made it - next stop is Olympia to see some other parts of Sara's family before we head back to Aussie land...
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Posted Feb 29, 2008, 12:18 am
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Olympia, Washington, United States - 4th March 2008
By: sararingham
Hey! Yesterday we went to Cabela's a very popular outdoor type store, it's known for its huge display of, well... it's centre piece lets say... it's huge and even has a little aquarium thing within the centre piece, it's very interesting to see all the different wild animals though...
Here's a picture of me standing near one side of the huge centre piece... here are some other photos..
As you can see there we're a LOT of animals on this huge piece, most of them are very old going back as much as 90 years ago for some of them, there was even a huge polar bear and a musk ox!
This is one of the fish that Sara got clearly in a photo in the little aquarium thing they had, this is called a Sun fish and Sara said she used to catch these when she was younger in Wisconsin visiting with her grandparents, kinda pretty aren't they?
... and upstairs, they even had a small African exhibit with some unique and interesting animals...
... the last picture is a White Rhino, which are the less critically endangered of the two Rhino species, it was interesting to see one, kind of sad though seeing all the animals at the same time...
Last but not least we got to see a big cat that resembled Cronus there we're a few of them on the centre piece, it's amazing to think that a cousin of Cronus can be SO big, and so fierce looking!
After we left, we went to a house where Sara spent time with some more of her family, there was a crazy dog so we didn't come out much besides to just be seen and that's about it - we had to stay protected in the bag, there was no time for pictures, the dog was just so crazy! But it was a very busy day! I'm glad I'm back home, more relaxing, we fly out on Saturday morning!
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Posted Mar 4, 2008, 6:04 am
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