Day 82 - Benalla - Colac

Good morning Benalla!

Once again we were blessed with beautiful weather although it was absolutely freezing cold first thing in the morning - I mean "make your nose run" cold!  As we were still hitched up we had another early morning getaway, the first of our little group of 7 to leave this morning.

The trip on the Hume Freeway is fairly mundane as there are trees either side of both sides of the freeway which completely restrict your view to the surrounding countryside.  I suppose a benefit is less accidents caused by people looking at the surrounding countryside instead of watching the road.  Unfortunately back at Wagga I had missed a turn that would have taken us down a more central part of Victoria and probably a little more interesting but we were here now.

The first sight of Melbourne isn't far down the road and of course once you see that - what is the next thing you see?  Bunnings!  

Finally back home, caravan in place after some issues with the ground being so soft where she normally parks and sinking into the ground we had to do a bit of levelling up.  We made an effort to get everything out of the van as soon as we got home.  Unpacking is a bit depressing - the holiday is over and it's back to the real world again but we have so many amazing memories of our trip that will keep us smiling for a while to come.  In the meantime - mother nature welcomed us home with a spectacular sunset.

So there it is - our "Not Quite 100" day journey done and dusted.

350km

Total - 13,788km

Top today 22°c - expecting overnight 10°c

Day 81 - West Wyalong - Benalla

Good morning West Wyalong!

Thankfully the wind died down overnight and we got some reasonable sleep.  Poor Miss Kitty, who really does like to sleep in until at least 9,30, isn't a huge fan of these early morning departures.  I'll just say she isn't a morning person - but despite that we get a tail wag every morning so I guess she just accepts now that it's a part of the holiday.  Given everything was still hooked up we were on the road this morning just after 8.00am and stopped by the saleyards on the way out of town watching the amazing sheepdogs do their thing getting the sheep off the trucks and into the yards.

We haven't seen one of these in a while..... and no - it's still not a holiday....

Things get greener the more south we go and this could be any country road near home.  And of course the canola fields are flowering - what an amazing sight they are in the sun.  We wish we had more time to spend looking through the little towns in this part of New South Wales but we really have to get cracking and get home.  I have so many fond memories of visiting here for dog shows but of course the focus is on the show and there never was much time for sight seeing.  Although I have to say that some of them don't look a lot different than they did 20 years ago.

This was the first irrigation we've seen in a very long while.

We did toss up stopping at Wagga Wagga for the night but knowing how big it is I figured we wouldn't really have time to look around and would be disappointed to not be able to see much of it.  We did do a bit of a drive around but it wasn't terribly caravan friendly and there was absolutely no parking spots big enough so we ended up doing a U turn at a roundabout and heading back to the road out again.  We'll get back there again one day.

Given we couldn't get a park anywhere at Wagga we decided to stop at Uranquinty for lunch.  It's a pretty little town with some pretty cute steel sculptures in the park.  It turned out to be not the greatest lunch stopover we've had and I wouldn't recommend the beef, bacon and cheese pie which although came highly recommended - failed to be a hit.  I'm not sure where the beef was and the bacon and cheese was just slop that poured out of the pastry.  Shane also ordered a caramel tart that was inedible due to the high sugar content.  The berry cheesecake was lovely and his curry pie was OK but it took me about 6 crown mints to get rid of the taste of that caramel!

We were hoping to freecamp for the night or at least pick up a spot at a showgrounds or other low cost option but after several phone calls through Albury, Wodonga and Wangaratta we ended up driving all the way through to Benalla and stopping at the showgrounds there for the night.  It's a lovely ground and we shared the area with about another 6 lots of campers.  There is no power or water and evidently the women's toilets were out of commission so the boys and girls were sharing.  I was very grateful to have one in the van tonight!

We really didn't have a lot of food options tonight in the van and so we took a walk across the road to a pub for a meal and spent a short while throwing some money at a poker machine.  We haven't chosen to eat out much at all on this trip so it was a nice treat.

478km

Total - 13,438km

Top today 18°c - expecting overnight 2°c