Another cold morning and so we were pretty grateful for having packed up most of the outside stuff yesterday. It seems as though each morning there are more and more empty spots in the park as the school holidays are now over and families head home.
Our neighbours for the past few days have an interesting return to home with mum and the two kids flying out of Yulara this morning, and dad driving home on his own back to the Mornington Peninsula via the Oodnadatta Track. A bit of a drive on your own!
We headed out the gates at around 8.30am with over 350km to drive to our next stop. Along the way I did wonder whether the people headed towards Yulara were saying what we had been saying a few days back "oh look at those poor people - their Yulara experience is over!" We've enjoyed our stay but it's quite expensive both generally for things like food and fuel, and for sightseeing, and unless you are fit enough to do lots of walking, there are only so many things to do after you've seen the main attractions. There are camel rides, helicopter rides, motor cycle rides and segway tours, but given we'd had our treat of the field of lights at $500 for the two of us - we figured we'd contributed to the local economy enough for this trip. At a total spend of $963.35 including accommodation, grocery top up, fuel, park entry and the field of lights tour - it really makes you wonder how a family with 3 or 4 kids can do it for 2 weeks.
Once back on the Stuart Highway the terrain begins to change quite dramatically. It gets quite rocky and hilly and leads me to again ponder the strange uniqueness that is Uluru and Kata Tjuta, and even nearby Mt Connor. They are so different and so unique even to one another, it makes you wonder how they could be created so differently when in other areas such rocky outcrops tend to be similar in their construction.
We spotted a few eagles on the way but unable to get any photos as they dined on last night's roadkill. These birds are so amazing especially in their size and beautiful to watch as they soar above you. But I'm always mindful of the fact that on our last trip we saw a 4wd that had pretty much to whole front taken out when hitting one - so I'm careful to slow down whenever they are on the road.
Signs like this are a nice reminder that you still have a long way to go and lots of memories to make on the way.
Our stopover tonight was at Stuarts Well Roadhouse which is a little under 100km from Alice Springs. Initially it was in my itinerary as an optional freecamp depending on whether we had wanted to either stay on at Yulara or see anything else in the area, but given we still haven't resolved all the issues with the power, Shane made the executive decision to get a powered site. The roadhouse itself is pretty rustic but did have a bit of character about it and there was a lovely big fire that many of the campers sat around after dark. We were happy to sit in the van and listen to the laughter and conversations and after watching the two girls from the motorhome next to us play hopscotch in the dark with a torch, we set up our LED strip lights on the side of Kitty's pen to give them enough light to play until they were finally called in to bed.
The one thing that didn't thrill me about this location was the mini zoo off to the side of the property with a number of ducks and other water birds, two emus and a young camel who was not much taller than I am. The sad part was the two emus spent the entire time we saw them walking up and down the length of the pen and every time the camel would attempt to come around to the side of the large pond where the food was, one of the emus would aggressively chase him back into a corner under a tree.
355 km
Total - 3,258 km
Top today 24°c - expecting overnight 3°c
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