A Sunday in the Blue Mountains

So we wanted to get out of the city and decided to head to the Blue Mountains.  We also figured that since on Sunday, the public transportation maxes out at $2.50, why not. Seems like everyone else thought that too.  Trains were absolutely packed.  People sitting on floors and steps.

Before going on about our adventure, here's some background on Blue Mountains National Park.
"Spanning 247,000 hectares, the Blue Mountains National Park is an iconic wilderness made up of blue-hazed valleys, sandstone rock formations, rainforests and waterfalls. An area ten times older than the Grand Canyon, the Greater Blue Mountains region was World Heritage listed in the year 2000, in recognition of its geographic and cultural significance." And apparently there is more than 100 species of eucalyptus here--who knew!

Blue Mountains are called this because it is densely populated by oil bearing Eucalyptus trees.  The atmosphere is filled with finely dispersed droplets of oil, which, in combination with dust particles and water vapor, scatter short-wave length rays of light which are predominately blue in color.

Our first impression was that is was a lot like Arizona, but with eucalyptus trees instead.

You can see the blue haze.

We decided to start to take a trail.  All of a sudden there were lots of people and it consisted of going down steep stairs.  There were younger adults in front of us and I thought a girl was going to have a panic attack.  It takes you down to a bridge.  

Steep and all natural stairs

Aram and I decided to skip the bridge but keep going on down.  We literally had no clue how far down this trail went.  Had to stop at times because it was tiring.  

Leading the way with that amazing face lol

By the time we got down to the bottom of the stairs there was a sign that said we went down 900 stairs.  No wondering why our legs were shaking pretty bad at the bottom.  And when I mean the bottom, we still weren't at the bottom of the canyon....just where the trail was. So we just kept walking and seeing all the different vegetation.

We decided we were NOT going to hike up 900 stairs to get out.  Luckily there is a train or cable car that takes you back to the top.  We decided on the train. It is called the Scenic Railway and it is known for being the steepest passenger railway in the world with and incline of 52 degrees.

It is a pretty short ride to get to the top and a little corny.  But it was better than climbing stairs.  You'll see in the video below.

On the train ride back to the city, it was so packed that we weren't even able to get a seat.  We actually were in the area in between cars where you would get out to disembark the train.  And even in there it was completely packed.  Needless to say, we were happy to get out of the train and make it home.  It was a memorable day trip.