April has been a terrible month for keeping up with my blog - it's like I used up all my blog motivation in the challenge and have been failing dismally ever since!

We've been keeping pretty busy, which is good and bad.  Easter weekend was a lot of fun.  Jeremy had to work for a couple hours on Good Friday morning, but then he was free for the rest of the day, so we decided to take a hike at Mt Lofty and enjoy the beautiful autumn colours.

Jeremy was lucky enough to be working a 12 hour shift on Saturday, so I had to keep myself busy.  I woke up bright and early for 'Stair Climbs' by the Torrens River where I was put through the paces by trainers for an hour.  Later in the day, I had an unexpected visit from a friend and we decided to take a trip up into the Adelaide Hills to meet with some other friends.  I definitely got my fill of nature/hills/etc, since on Sunday we had planned a picnic by the river with friends and board games.  It was a gorgeous day and we sprawled out on picnic blankets and played Taboo and Ticket to Ride - really a perfect afternoon.

This past weekend was a long weekend as well due to ANZAC day.  By some miracle, Jeremy actually had all three days off from work, so we couldn't pass up the opportunity to make use of this time.  We tossed around a few ideas and settled on a road trip to Coonawarra, one of the wine regions of South Australia.  On the way, we stopped at the Naracoorte Caves (a world heritage site) and took a tour.  There were a few options, but since we were short on time we chose one of the 30 minute tours, through the Alexandra Cave.

 
From the caves, the drive to Coonawarra wasn't too long.  Here's a bit of background about the Coonawarra region provided by my old friend Wikipedia: Coonawarra is a wine region within the Limestone Coast in South Australia, that is known for the Cabernet Sauvignon wines produced on its "terra rossa" soil. Coonawarra is an Aboriginal word meaning "Honeysuckle". It is about 380 km southeast of Adelaide, close to the border with Victoria. 

The actual town of Coonawarra was tiny.  Penola, another town about 10 kilometres away was much bigger and had many more accommodation options, but we wanted to stay right in Coonawarra.  I found a place called the Coonawarra Cottages and booked it for two nights.  We were in the 'Picker's Hut' and we were delighted to see that there was a fireplace and a bin of wood provided.  It was homey and cozy.  Our grand plan was to sleep in, head over to the Coonawarra store where we had pre-ordered a picnic basket, and then do a walking tour of some of the wineries.  It all went perfectly to plan.  The picnic was tasty - we had a chicken/quinoa/veggie salad, baguettes, nuts, cheese and crackers on the lawn of Brand's Laira winery.  The people working at the wineries were lovely and we made sure to tell everyone how much Ross loved the wine from this region.  It was all over much too quickly, but we wrapped up our day with dinner at 'Fodder' which was conveniently located a 30 second walk from our cottage.

So now, we're counting down the days until our trip to Canada!  We will have some visitors in the meantime - Jeremy's aunt and uncle (Lyn and Don) are traveling through and will be stopping by to see us which we're looking forward to.

Here's hoping I get a couple more entries in before we head off! :)