Shearing Sheds

There are lots of sheep farmers in this part of the world. Just so happens that one of the Australians on the trip raises sheep at his farm back home. By chance we got to see some sheep being sheared up close and personal. This was very interesting to me as obviously there ain't too many sheep in Gastonia!


This was an old abandoned community shearing shed. We stopped here to have lunch. Really the whole little town was deserted. It was sad actually. And it was right beside the ocean. Literally just walk across the street and you can jump in the water.


These were taken at a shearing shed that is still being used. The tour company had never stopped here before but the Australians noticed it and wanted to stop. We didn't realize that it was actually being used. We stayed for about 45 minutes and watched the sheep being sheared and talked to the workers. One Australian in our group just jumped in there and took over and sheared one sheep himself. They said that the guy in the foreground above was very fast. They estimated that he could shear about 250 sheep per day!! That would be back breaking work.


This guy appeared to be the man in charge. Everyone there was so nice and took the time to talk to us, answer our questions and let us feel the wool right after it came off the sheep.

This is the shed that the fella were working in.

This is a shot of the abandoned shed by the ocean.

We ate so much lamb on this trip. I for sure doubled my lifetime intake of lamb on this trip alone.

Back Down South

Since I had so much demand yesterday (all 3 of my readers), I've decided to try and do better about posting. And since the only thing I have to post about is our trip, prepare to be bored with vacation stories and pictures.

We went back to South America this year. We visited the Patagonia region. Traveling along the Andes Mountains, we crossed back and forth between Chile and Argentina about 5 times. We did this with a motorcycle tour group and we were paired with 4 crazy Australians and one Brit. This was one of our best trips. The weather was perfect, the scenery was beautiful and the company was very entertaining.

Here are a few of the sights along the way...

Doesn't that background look fake? This was one of the most picturesque spots I've ever seen.

Taken from a hotel we stayed at.

A boat coming to pick us up to take us to our hotel for the night. You could only get there by boat.

Ash from a recent volcano eruption. Never seen that before.

Stay tuned, more thrilling vacation posts to come!!